All Alone Again
by The MudDog
Summary: Sam doesn't stop drinking blood after Lilith's death. Instead, he runs off and kidnaps a new demon, not realizing the Hell plots he's getting himself into. Dean's left to stop the apocalypse, and, hindered as he is by Sam's disappearance and a tag-along author who really, really wants him to star in her next novel, life pretty much sucks. Or... Season 5 if Sam took the darker path.
1. Chapter 1

All Alone Again \- The MudDog

**Summary: **Picking up at the start of 5.02, Sam's back on his blood diet. He runs away without any clear idea of what he's doing, kidnaps a demon, and then gets saddled with another human helper. They both have their own goals, and Sam's not quite as on top of things as he'd like to believe. Dean has to stop the apocalypse, but, when he finds out Sam is Lucifer's vessel, it comes down, once again, to hauling his obnoxious little brother back in line. With help from Bobby and Chuck, and hindrance from an author who's set on making him the subject of her next book, Dean and friends criss-cross the country on a chase that takes them closer to danger than it does to Sam.

**Warnings:** Violence. Language. Some suggestive comments.

**Author's Note:** This is the first fanfiction story I wrote, and, as such, the first 3 chapters are pretty awful. If you can stick it out until chapter 4, I applaud you and shower you with many thanks. Both the plot and the writing quality pick up around then (I think), but if you still don't like it by the end of chapter 6, it's probably not for you. Chapters switch on a frequent non-schedule schedule between Sam and Dean, but point of view comes from a larger pool of characters (Sam, Dean, Bobby, OCs, ya know). So have at it if sounds like your thing, and I hope you enjoy!

CHAPTER 1:

The music throbbed through the floorboards, vibrating up the legs of chairs and tables to shake the bar-goers and their glasses alike. It was a clever plot on the proprietor's part; the more alcohol that got spilt, the more the customers would have to buy… and it seemed to be working. From the tattooed lumberjacks to the disgruntled school teachers, the recently-dumped losers to the celebrating businessmen, everybody seemed to have at least three empty glasses rattling along with the base line on their tables.

The whole scene was a little too urban for Dean, a little too club-like. Instead of tobacco smoke bathing the room in a misty gray, there were flashing lights, red lights, and it was too much like being underneath bloody water. Instead of rock and country fizzling through the speakers, they were blasting this… this… Well, whatever it was, it was an abomination. Total piece of modern shit. Sucked ass.

Dean started in on his third beer. Glancing about, he realized he was probably the only person in the whole bar drinking beer, which usually would've raised his eyebrows and driven an amused half-smile onto his face. He would've made some comment to Sam, like, "Is that guy drinking a blue Mai Tai? What is this, Hawaii in the Ice Age?" Sam wouldn't have looked up. He would've been his usual bitchy self and pretended not to hear because he was Sam and had more important things to do with his time than insult the locals.

As it was, however, Dean said nothing. His eyebrows stayed perfectly level as the blue Mai Tai dude shinnied by. He didn't half-smile, and Sam didn't not look up because Sam wasn't there. Son-of-a-bitch had left Dean the stupidest note of all time (a note that was now crumpled up, soaking in the last drops of alcohol at the bottom of Dean's first beer) and vanished off into the night. Typical fucking Sam. Although he'd used his fist to crush the life out of the note hours ago, it still played on repeat in his mind, like it had become part of the nauseating beat of the bar's playlist. "Dean, I'm leaving. I feel like things haven't been working out well between us lately, and I think it's best if we each just do our own thing for a while," and then he'd signed it. Dean scratched at his chin angrily. Content aside, just the way Sam'd written it pissed him off. "I'm leaving… I feel like things haven't been working out between us… I think it's best…" It was like some poorly written breakup scene. With a Stanford education, couldn't Sam manage to be a little less cliché? Apparently not… melodramatic son-of-a-bitch. Dean kept scratching his chin.

"Can I get you anything?" a woman shouted over the music.

Dean glanced up from his beer to find a plump, pink-faced waitress hovering next to his table. She'd been smiling, but when he met her eyes, her round cheeks fell along with the rest of her face. "Oh, honey, what's wrong?" she said, taking a step closer.

"What?" Dean's forehead contracted as he stared up at the lady, and he leaned back a little. The hell was she saying? He was a thirty-year-old dude in a leather jacket; what on earth could make her talk to him like he was a high school freshman she'd just rescued from being stuffed in a locker?

"Your chin," she said. The rings of black make-up around her eyes made them look even wider and more concerned than they already were, and Dean found this a bit troubling. When he continued to gaze back blankly, she pointed at his face with one pudgy hand. "You're bleeding."

"What?" Dean said again. He peered down at the hand he'd been using to scratch his chin. In the bloody light it was hard to see, but for the first time he noticed that his fingers felt a little sticky, which probably meant that the waitress was right. Dean shrugged. "I guess I am. Huh. I'll deal with it later."

"Are you sure?" The waitress was still hovering right next to the table, sucking on her lower lip as she peered down at him with the big doe eyes. "You don't want me to get you a Band-Aid or something?"

"No, I'm good, really. Thanks."

She still looked a bit nervous, but she nodded anyway. "Okay, honey, just don't scratch anymore. Don't make it worse."

"Yeah, you got it." He faked a smile to send her on her way. Then he frowned down at his nails. Had he really just ripped his own face open without noticing? He dabbed at his chin with the back of his hand, and, sure enough, it came away sticky. Huh.

"Was she really pretty?"

Dean spun around. "What?"

It was the waitress again. She'd bent over to speak face to face with him, and her eyes stared into his with utter sincerity, huge and black. She reminded Dean of a very large doll. He'd always found dolls a bit creepy, and he realized he was subconsciously leaning back again.

"The girl," the waitress went on with a solemn nod. "I thought you might want to talk about it. You look like the kind of guy who comes in here and wants to talk about things."

"I'm sorry, but… Lady, what the hell are you talking about?"

She nodded at him, a nod that was very sad and sympathetic. "Did it come as a surprise?"

Dean shook his head at her as his eyebrows hiked up his forehead. Seriously, what the hell?

"The breakup," she clarified. "It's okay; I've seen it a hundred times. Guys come in here every day — rich guys, poor guys, big guys, little guys — all feeling like crap over some girl, and they try to drink it away." She nodded at him again. "And you—" She made a small gesture towards him with her hand. "Well, you fit right in with the rest of them."

Dean stared back at her incredulously, not yet having pulled himself together enough to interrupt her flow.

And she was flowing alright. "I tell them all the same thing," she said. "I'll tell you, too. I say, 'Honey, look around you. Right here tonight, there are at least twenty women in this one bar. Now think about how many bars there are in the city, and how many cities there are in the state. Pretty soon you realize that there's one huge army of single women out there, and you really think you've already found the best one?' That's what I tell them. Eventually it'll sink in and you'll feel better." She gave him a knowing nod.

Dean downed the last of his beer and stood up. "Well, thanks, sweetheart," he said, pulling out his wallet. "I'm sure you've helped a lot of… sad guys in your day… But I don't have a chick problem." He dropped the bills on the table and slipped the wallet back into his jacket. "I have a bitch problem."

He nodded at the confused waitress and pushed past her towards the exit. As he strode out the door into the cold, black of the city night, he shook his head. Funny how the lady's words had gotten to him. Not like she'd intended obviously, but still. Twenty girls to a bar, a hundred bars in the city, thousands of cities in the country… millions and millions of girls… But in all those thousands of cities, hundreds of thousands of bars, there was only the one bitchy little brother. Tough luck, wasn't it?


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2:

Hundreds of miles away, over highways and junkyards, apartments, forests and rivers, a very different man stood, far from the noise and light pollution of any city. He was walking along the side of the road, heading in the direction he thought was south but couldn't quite be sure. To his left, the asphalt fell away in a shallow gravel embankment before the ground was swallowed by willows and blackberry thickets. With a nearly full moon, this low-lying vegetation glowed with ghostly light, appearing more like a tangle of clean-picked bones than anything alive and growing. Nothing stirred beneath the trees and brambles, as if even the smallest and stupidest of creatures felt the presence of death.

The land's human inhabitants certainly felt it. On the opposite side of the road, a line of far-spaced farm houses stood with their backs to the hills, hunching down into the grass so as to be less easily spotted. The owners of these houses stayed locked inside. As soon as the sun had begun to slip behind the hills, the mothers had felt a funny prickle climb up their arms. They'd gone out onto their porches, where the paint flaked off in long white strips, and watched the shadows seeping up from the ground like some toxic liquid. The children had all come inside quickly, and even the adult men, many of whom had spent their whole lives out on this edge of the wilderness, had hurried home. They'd darted cautious looks over their shoulders until they were safely over the threshold with all the doors and windows locked. Something, they could sense, was obviously wrong with the night. Everyone could feel it. Something was coming.

The man walking down the road couldn't sense any of this. He felt more at ease, more able to breathe than he had in months… perhaps years. Having grown up with danger as a constant drum in the back of his mind, the ominous whispering of the wind as it traded dark secrets between the willow branches hardly bothered him now. Instead, the air currents wrapped chills of excitement up his arms. He liked how the moon stared down at him from above like a Cyclops's single blind eye, monstrous yet utterly indifferent. It didn't care about the things he hid. It didn't care if he was a saint or a sinner or the Devil himself. No one was really all that important to something as eternal and dead as the moon.

Sam Winchester also liked the frozen, black air. He liked how his breath swished out in puffs of mist, visible proof that he was alive. He liked how the shadows washed over him with their translucent waves but said nothing. The darkness, he felt, had pulled him into its secret club and was now protecting him from judgmental eyes. It understood like few others that being feared was not the same as being evil, and, if he could've, he would've held off the dawn forever and walked in an eternal night. The night was his ally.

Right now, though, he couldn't enjoy the dark solitude as much as he otherwise would've because there was a burning ache squeezing from his stomach up to his throat, and it was very difficult to ignore. His brain, too, throbbed against the inside of his skull as if all the vessels had contracted and the blood being forced through was under far too much pressure, liable to explode. The surface of his skin steamed into the night, and the sweat bubbled up along his hairline. Muscle groups quivered at random: his left shoulder, his spine, his right calf. If anyone had spotted him and really paused to look rather than just moving on with a cursory glance, they would've assumed he was sick. Really sick.

Was he sick? Debatable. He definitely had all the external symptoms of a high fever, but his brain still functioned with piercing clarity, and, in Sam's mind at least, this meant he wasn't really _sick_ sick. His body was just letting him know that he needed something in a more forceful way than he would've liked.

Suddenly he froze. Feet glued to the pavement, every joint stiff, he stared intently across the road at the night-swallowed houses and listened. There it was again: bum-bum. He stood perfectly still, waiting, wanting to make sure before he acted…

…bum-bum…

…bum-bum…

It was faint, but he wasn't imagining it. A little smile twitched at the corner of his mouth as the pain tightened its stranglehold on his internal organs. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath through his nose. Yes! There it was! He remained rooted to the asphalt for another minute as he drank in the smell. The smile ran away with his lips, widening into a full-out smirk. Then he opened his eyes and set off across the road, satisfied that he could once again track demons without witnesses, sulfur trails, or any of that subjective crap.

It was a curse, sure, but it'd already caused its damage. Seriously, what could possibly come of it now that was worse than the start of the end of… well, everything? Before the world went to hell, he could at least try to use his… unusual talents… to do something good, right?

Right. And that started now.

…

Actually, it had started two weeks ago… by accident, of course… when Dean and Sam had been closing in on some no-name demon outside Toledo.

"Stay outside," Dean had said as he slid out of the Impala with the knife. "Make sure no more of the bastards show up to help their little friend here."

"Are you serious?" Sam replied, getting out and leaning over the car's roof. His lips were twisted skeptically. "Since when do demons have friends? They're not exactly a lovey bunch."

Dean was already heading across the sidewalk towards the house where they thought the demon had holed up, but he turned back to say, "It's just a precaution." He put on a smile. "You don't want me to get all ripped up do you, Sammy? What with my face? Just watch the doors."

Sam's eyes narrowed. "Wait a minute," he said. He pushed off of the car and began to advance towards Dean. "You're not seriously…" He let his voice trail off, knowing that Dean already understood what he was talking about.

"Not seriously what? I just asked you to watch the doors." But Dean could tell before the last words were out that he hadn't gotten the tone quite right, and this was confirmed by the look on Sam's face, which had gone from skeptical to flat out cold.

"I'm coming," he said.

Dean had clenched and unclenched his fist several times. Sam should not be in that house and he knew it. Just a week ago, he'd opened Lucifer's cage. A week before that, he'd left Dean lying in a pile of shattered glass and wood shards on a motel room floor to run off with a demon! How the hell was any of that supposed to just be okay now? But Dean didn't want to start that again, not right now anyway, so, after a second's pause, he shrugged and turned onto the path that led up to the house with Sam only a meter behind.

It was one of those old Victorian masterpieces, intricate gingerbread designs framing the doorway and eaves, rounded shingles like fish scales all up and down the sides, like something right out of a fairytale. Dean didn't like fairytales. He kicked down the door and listened to the sound of the fancy hinges snapping with great satisfaction.

"Couldn't you have picked the lock?" Sam hissed.

Dean shrugged, tightening his grip on the knife as he pushed into the darkness of the front hall. "This is more fun."

Sam had frowned at the back of his brother's head and stepped lightly over the fallen door. Did Dean seriously think _he_ was the one who couldn't control himself?

"Hey Sam," Dean had called from the darkness. "Think you could close the door behind you?"

Sam didn't deem this worthy of a reply. He laid down a line of salt across the threshold with a deepening frown, and then followed Dean's self-satisfied chuckles into the next room.

Like the front hall, it was pitch black, but underneath Dean's quiet laugh, Sam thought he heard something. He punched his brother on the shoulder and made an emphatic slicing motion across his throat before pointing to his ear. Dean shut up instantly, and together they listened, trying to melt into the silent shadows.

Sure enough, there it was… a low chant coming from the back recesses of the room where the darkness shielded everything from view. The individual words were too muffled to pick out, but it was clearly Latin, which meant the demon must be cooking up some nasty piece of spell work for them. Dean motioned for Sam to take the left side of the room. Sam nodded and set out across the Oriental rug towards the far wall. Even in their current situation, he spared a moment to pity the owners of the house, who'd no doubt come home to find dirty boot marks all across their very expensive, very fine carpets… as well as a missing front door. Still, better than coming home to a demon sitting on your sofa.

And, in fact, the demon _was_ sitting on the sofa. Dean had found the light switch and, with a little click, thrown the room into a rich, orangey glow. The shadows flew under the furniture, growling silently up at him, but the demon stayed right where she was, legs tucked up under her in a cutesy position that no real sixty-year-old woman would ever attempt.

She glanced up from under her gray curls to smile at the brothers as the lights came on, delicately placing a cereal bowl on the coffee table before her. Now that they could pinpoint her exact whereabouts, both Sam and Dean were rapidly closing in on the demon with drawn weapons, but she only pushed her hair out of her face and slowly, almost casually, reached for the gun that lay beside her on the leather cushions. She pointed it at Sam, who stopped. Fifteen feet away on the other side of the room, Dean stopped, too, staring with narrowed eyes between his brother and the demon.

"Sam," the demon chided mockingly. "Dean… aren't you two going to stay for the party?"

Dean scanned the old lady with raised eyebrows. "No offense, sweetheart, but I don't think we have the same definition of party. I'm not into the whole tea and cat sweaters thing."

The demon smiled and the wrinkles multiplied on her age-spotted cheeks. "Oh, that's not exactly what I had in mind," she said. "See, I just called up a few of my friends—" She nodded towards the bowl on the table, which, as Dean had suspected, was filled with a not-so-mysterious dark red liquid. "—and they're just _dying_ to meet you. Especially you, Sam." She beamed at the younger Winchester. "We have all sorts of entertainment planned out."

"I'll pass," Sam said, though he still didn't dare to move.

"No, I don't think you will." The demon smiled. "And Dean…" She snapped her attention to the older Winchester, who had begun to creep closer while she was busy talking to Sam. "If you want me to shoot dear little Sammy, by all means keep moving. Otherwise, stop right there."

Dean had already stopped. But it was killing him. He was so close, so fucking close! There were only seven, maybe eight feet between him and the demon bitch, and if she'd just turn a little more to her left, he could throw the knife and hit home. She didn't though; she was mostly facing Sam, and, satisfying as it may be, sinking the blade into her shoulder would hardly finish the job.

Dean noticed Sam's eyes flick towards him and glanced up, but he'd already looked away again, back towards the demon.

"Did you set this whole thing up?" Sam asked her.

Dean frowned. The glance had been some sort of signal obviously, but for what? Son-of-a-bitch couldn't be a little more explicit? When Sam darted his gaze back Dean's way, Dean lifted his hands slightly in a silent, "Dude, I have no idea what you're trying to say."

"I did," the demon said in reply to Sam's question. Her smile stretched, showing more age-dulled teeth.

Dean tried to make a close study of Sam without being too obvious about it. The demon wasn't watching him, but still…

"It wasn't even that hard either," the old lady went on. She tipped her head back in smug satisfaction. "All a demon's gotta do is lay a trail and you two follow it like a pair of cockroaches after some marshmallow crumbs."

That's when Dean had noticed the three fingers subtly extended and tapping against the leg of Sam's jeans. Ah, Sam… the man with a plan. He nodded, hoping that Sam caught it.

"Who all's coming?" Sam asked. Now there were only two fingers against his leg.

The demon laughed, "Oh I couldn't tell you that. It would spoil the surprise."

One finger.

"Really?" Sam said, just for the sake of saying something. He pulled up the last of his fingers and flung himself to the floor.

Dean flung himself at the demon, who shrieked. But she was fast for a sixty-year-old lady. Although he managed to knock the gun out of her hand first, she quickly ripped out of his grasp and jumped over the couch out of sight. Sam had hopped up again by this point and sprinted after Dean, the two of them circling around opposite sides of the sofa to trap the demon between them. She crouched low against the leather back like a cornered cat, teeth bared, head snapping back and forth on her wrinkly neck as she tried to keep an eye on both of them at once.

"It doesn't matter if you kill me," she hissed. "My friends will be here soon anyway, and they'll punish you."

"Won't do you much good though," Dean said. He dove in with the knife.

The demon sprang away, but, unfortunately for her, away from Dean was towards Sam, and Sam wasted no time locking his grip around her arms. She kicked and twisted. She screamed and writhed, but she didn't have time to get away before Dean was there with the knife, sinking it deep into her stomach. Her inner fire flared up, hot and orange, before dying out and leaving the old woman's body to sink to the floor.

Sam added bloodstains to the list of inconveniences the homecoming family would have to face. Then he realized how callous this was, and, shame burning like acid low in his stomach, bent down next to the woman, who had, of course, been human underneath. He began to arrange her limbs in a more respectful pose for the dead.

"Sam, what are you doing?" Dean interrupted. He was already halfway back across the room, arms raised in a what-the-hell gesture. "We have to get out of here now, or do you wanna be part of some demon block party?"

"Right," Sam said. He pushed himself back up and, without thinking about it, swiped his hand across his face to get rid of the sweat. It felt funny: hot, and wet. He licked his lips, reaching up again to rub off this new sensation… which is when he noticed the blood on his hand, and subsequently when he tasted it on the tip of his tongue. Shit. Oh shit.

And yet, even as the acidic shame in Sam's stomach sunk to a still lower pH, he didn't spit it out. He swallowed, then desperately wiped at his face with his sleeve so that, by the time they got to the car, there would be no evidence that he was any different than the Sam who'd stepped out twenty minutes before.

And that had been the real beginning…


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3:

At first, Sam had felt fine… better than fine actually. His senses were keener, his mind faster, everything just so much more alive! But it hadn't lasted. After a week, his hands had started to tremor. When he and Dean were out eating, he'd nearly spilt his water glass, and he had to knot his fists up in a napkin under the table to make sure Dean didn't notice. His eyes had begun to ache the next day, and then his whole body. By the end of the second week, every moment trapped in the confines of the motel room, or the even tighter confines of the car, was a form of slow torture. The dashboard seemed to glare back at him, and every guitar chord rippling through the stereo hissed, "I know what you did, Sam. I know," so that his mind started to spin. It wouldn't stop until he'd stumbled out of the car and gotten several feet away, and even then he could hear the whisper in the back of his mind.

Worse was that Dean seemed to be catching on. Sitting across from him in restaurants, standing on the other side of motel rooms, Sam could feel without looking that Dean's eyes had narrowed in on his face and were completing their own careful and calculating examination. He'd already been suspicious; it wouldn't take him long to put the pieces together, and then the whole mess from before Lilith's death would peel open again and all hell would break loose. Unwilling to go down that road, there was only one real option; Sam had to get out, and fast. So he did. He left a note, and he hit the road.

Now he was striding across the asphalt of the empty street with long, quick paces. His eyes, black in the darkness, flicked between the approaching farm houses as he tried to hone in on the right one. Not the low-lying one to the right, he decided. It was either the tall white one that seemed to be slouching back against the hill or the pert little yellow guy to its left. The black squares of their windows both seemed to stare at him with mournful dead eyes, clearly hoping that he'd leave them alone, but that was something Sam couldn't do; the vicious bramble that had become of his stomach and esophagus wouldn't allow it.

As he thrust his way through the untrimmed grass, which left wet streaks of dew all along the cuffs of his jeans, Sam strained his ears to pick up the heartbeat again. He could hear it — louder now — but the direction was still hazy. The beats bounced off the walls and reverberated back through the frozen air, cleverly clouding their point of origin, and there was just no way to determine which of the two houses held the monster.

Although disoriented, Sam shrugged; he'd just have to pick one then, wouldn't he? And as to which one? Well… the taller house was closer.

Going slow so that each foot fell with a cat paw's silence on the creaky wood, he slid up the porch steps. He breathed through his mouth in long steady inhales and exhales, trying to calm his heart as it began to pump faster and faster, and the muscles, which were already on edge, tensed and un-tensed in little spasms along the length of his body. Yet despite Sam's careful efforts, the top step moaned under his weight and he had to jump off quickly, backing into the wall beside the door. For a moment, all he could hear was the violent drumming of the blood in his brain as his heart kicked into top gear. He licked his lips. Please to God let no one have heard! Stay asleep! Stay asleep!

Sam waited. Twenty seconds… Thirty… Nothing happened. He allowed himself to blink and then to unstick from the slatted wall. Again he licked his lips, noticing how dry his mouth had become. He tried to swallow the staleness, then froze to listen.

…bum-bum…

…bum-bum…

Oh, the demon was definitely here, somewhere behind that door, so close that it seemed to be emitting little electric shocks of anticipation which darted all across Sam's skin and set his muscles to their uncontrollable contractions again. Just a few more minutes…

Sam had left the demon knife with Dean, knowing he wouldn't need it for long, but he'd stowed a different blade in his jacket before departing, one which he now pulled out and held aloft before him. The moonlight sliced across its smooth metal surface, reflecting back into Sam's eyes with an unearthly glow that mirrored the bone-like glint of the willow trees on the far side of the road. These trees looked on impassively as Sam bent to pick the lock — the affairs of humans had never been any concern of theirs — but in the silence of the night, they really had nothing better to do, and so watch they did.

It wasn't long before the gears slipped into place with a velvet-smooth click, and Sam withdrew his picks, turning the handle as gently as possible before pushing the door open and sliding through. His entry produced only a single, soft puff of air, which no one in the house noticed, and in five seconds he was already two-thirds of the way up the main staircase, following his ears and nose towards the source of the heartbeats.

…bum, bum…

Up on the landing, Sam stalked silently over the worn floorboards. There was a short hallway before him with two doorways branching off on either side, all closed, all identical. A couple weeks ago, he and Dean would've had to try all of them, waking the family and causing a panic, but now all he had to do was listen. Before each door, he paused and waited, trying to determine if the beating was louder or quieter than before. It was still a tricky game, but after two circuits, he was almost positive that his prize hid behind the second door on the right. The aching in his stomach didn't let him pause; he jerked the knob to the side and shoved through.

Eyes already adjusted to the dark, he instantly spotted the demon as it scrambled up from the bed.

"What the hell," it mumbled, voice groggy as it stumbled backwards and tripped over a pile of discarded clothes.

Although this seemed like an odd thing for a demon to do, Sam had no doubt that it _was _a demon because the smell was clawing up his nose, the sound of its accelerating heart practically banging him over the head. He advanced towards it in three long strides.

"Hey," the demon protested, eyes widening as it realized what was happening and struggled to untangle itself from the clothes. "Hey, hold up, dude!"

Sam wasn't really in the listening mood. He grabbed the struggling demon by the arm and yanked him upright.

"Wait!" the demon said again. "Hold up a second, dude! If you're a hunter this isn't what you think; I'm reformed!" He was trying to pull away from Sam's grip, but he wasn't doing a very good job of it. "Just hear me out."

"Shut up," Sam said, pressing his knife to the demon's throat, "and do what I say." He could hear muted voices coming from the other side of the wall, and he had a sinking feeling that it wouldn't be long before someone decided to check up on the rest of the rooms. He'd rather not have to deal with that, so he spun the demon around and began hustling him towards the door. "Walk," he commanded.

The demon was very obliging, but also very clumsy. It tripped several times on their way down the stairs, and Sam winced as the voices rose overhead. By the time they reached the first floor, he could hear one of the upstairs doors whining open and footsteps pattering across the landing. Judging they only had a few seconds before the person got into eyeshot, Sam shoved the demon through the door, slipped out after him, and then set off at a jog with his disgruntled hostage in tow. Across the slick field, over the road, and then down the gravel embankment into the cover of the blackberry thickets.

The demon, who apparently hadn't bothered to possess a very fit body, slouched over panting. "Dude, that sucked," he gasped, and, after a few more deep breaths, added, "What do you even want?"

Sam stared down at his scrawny prisoner with bunched eyebrows and a crinkled nose. What kind of hell bitch said shit like that? Moreover, how third-rate and out-of-the-loop did a demon have to be to not have heard of the Winchesters? Not that he had a huge ego or anything, but Sam had gotten used to being recognized.

Trying to shake off the weirdness, he grabbed the demon by the collar and thrust him deeper into the brambles. "You're still shutting up," he growled. "Walk."

The demon walked.


	4. Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4:

Dean had spent a very lousy night in a very lousy motel, and he woke up with his face stuck to the pillow by a little patch of drool. Totally gross. He wiped at his mouth, but only managed to spread it out in a thinner layer. Great. Just what he needed for the kick-off to another fantastic day — a spit facial.

He considered that it might be best to say "to hell with it" and take a shower, but he wasn't quite up for that yet. It was too early for water. He needed coffee — and not that thin crap that the motel dished out either — real coffee. Real coffee never came in a Styrofoam cup; it was paper or ceramic; those were the rules.

Clearly, however, nobody had yet bothered to inform the Day-N-Nyte Motel about "the rules," and so Dean had no choice but to slouch out the door in search of a more refined establishment. He tugged his jacket tighter across his shoulders and frowned up at the sun's cheerful brightness, which beamed off of shop windows, puddles in the street, and dew drops in the grass like it didn't have a care in the world. The same sun beams also slid along the sleek edges of the Lulu's Diner sign that had just caught Dean's attention. A whiteboard propped up in the window advertised Lulu's "AMAAAAZING BLACK BREW!" — and with that many exclamation marks, how could Dean pass it up? He opened the door to the merry tinkling of a bell.

Several of the diner's patrons raised their heads at the sound, but most of them quickly determined that he was no one of great consequence and returned to their hash browns, papers, or phones without a second glance. In fact, there was only one woman who didn't look back down right away. She wasn't particularly subtle about it either, and, on a normal day, Dean would've noticed straight off that her gaze was tracking his movements across the tiled floor with a suspicious intensity. As it was, however, he was still too far gone in his morning fog to even register her presence.

Dean leaned his upper body against the counter and squinted at the skinny kid by the register. "Can I get a coffee?" he grumbled.

The kid nodded, but he gave Dean a very pointed, very unfriendly look that said in no unclear terms, "Get off my counter." Locating the sweet spot in an otherwise dull morning, Dean stretched even further across the fake-wood surface, pretending to examine the menu on the far wall. He watched the kid stiffen with a well-concealed grin, confident that there was no way in hell the little beanstalk was going to confront him about it; he just enjoyed watching him squirm. In the long run, Dean told himself, a little discomfort would do the kid good… maybe dislodge that stick from his ass.

The woman, who Dean still hadn't noticed, continued to follow his every move from behind her thin, wire-rimmed glasses. She'd completely forgotten about the Grade AA organic eggs that were now congealing on her plate, had not, in fact, even noticed when the fork had fallen out of her hand to land in a ball of loose hairs on the floor. None of it mattered anymore. She was leaning forward in her seat, already overly-large blue eyes gaping to unheard of diameters as she took in the newcomer's hair, garb and mannerisms. Yes, yes, yes! He was perfect! Six months of writer's block, three ex-boyfriends, two skeptical siblings, and one PhD advisor who no longer expected her to ever produce anything, but now… now inspiration had struck! A flash from above and there he was, the exact person she hadn't known she'd been looking for.

He was from the fringes of society, she decided, nodding to herself quietly. A macho guy, but really caring underneath. Someone who was externally charming but usually held back in relationships because he could never bring himself to trust a stranger. Yes, yes, yes! Ooh, this was going to be so good!

But no… he was leaving. He'd scooped up his coffee (which was in a paper cup), slid off the counter with a last sly smirk for the register boy, and begun to stride back towards the door. No! No, he couldn't get away; her life would be ruined! The woman jumped up, rattling the table and causing a few of the nearest customers to shoot her funny looks… but she didn't care. She fumbled for her bag and her laptop, bending down to snatch up a fallen pen, and then she was off, whirling out the door without a backwards glance and setting the bell to an unusually exuberant fit of tinkling.

Outside, she whipped her head up and down the street, hoping against hope that she hadn't lost him already. But no, there! That had to be the back of his jacket! Who else would wear dark leather this early in the morning? And so, with a last guilty glance along the sidewalk, the woman set off after him at a brisk walk, not wanting to be noticed, but also very keen on staying in eyeshot.

The object of her chase didn't seem to realize that there was a predator on his trail, and he continued to meander along at an unhurried pace. He took a swig of coffee, ran his fingers through his hair, shot an angry look up at the gorgeous blue of the sky. So perfect! The woman hardly blinked as she stalked her quarry across the treacherous terrain. Her heart was thumping a-mile-a-minute; her eyes had narrowed to intense slits of baby blue. In the calculating recesses of her mind, she cataloged every detail, from the precise texture of the jeans to the subtlest color variations in the jacket. Nothing escaped her!

When the man turned off the sidewalk onto the grease-stained pavement of the motel parking lot, she crouched down behind a yellowing hedge and watched through the leaves. He was heading towards an older model of car, a black one, and simultaneously pulling something out of his pocket. What was it? The woman leaned into the hedge, eyes widening. It was… it was… oh, it was just a set of keys. She relaxed again, biting her lip as she continued to squint between the dying branches. The man was fitting the keys into the lock on the trunk now, twisting to the left. His head snapped up to give the lot a quick once-over, and then he hoisted the trunk lid…

And what he pulled out this time was most certainly not a set of keys.


	5. Chapter 5

**Heya. Quick author's note here. I wanted to explain exactly where this story begins in relation to the real show to erase any confusion. It's canon up through the early scenes of Good God Y'all (season 5 episode 2), at which point it begins to stray. So they know Dean is Michael's vessel but they don't know that Sam is Lucifer's. Lucifer is currently possessing Nick. Castiel has carved the angel-proofing into everybody's ribs; Bobby's in a wheelchair, and Castiel has taken Dean's necklace to go hunt down God. However, in this version Rufus never calls Bobby and War hasn't yet shown his lovely face. Sam and Dean just leave the hospital to do their own thing.**

**Hope that helps.**

* * *

CHAPTER 5:

Dean tried to look casual as he tucked the gun into his waistband; he had a funny feeling that someone was watching him, and being unarmed while being watched was worse than being trapped naked in a pen of hungry dingoes. If Sam had been there, they would've turned around and hunted the bastard down, and damn would it've been one sorry son-of-a-bitch for ever having messed with the Winchesters. But, since he was alone, he just locked the trunk back up and headed over to his room, continuing to pretend that he was unaware of the stalker. He even whistled as he opened the door and let himself in — Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress by the Hollies. Yes, to the untrained eye, everything was perfectly awesome in Dean Winchester's world.

Only once he was inside with the door locked did he drop the act. Moving fast, he shook out a line of salt across the doorway and the sill of the room's single window. He snatched the knife from under his pillow and tested to make sure that the gun in his waistband was still secure. Then, silently, he crept over to the window, slipping his finger between the curtain and the wall to create a little gap through which to see.

It was only five seconds before a movement caught his eye. It was a head. It had popped up from behind a hedge on the other side of the lot, sun gleaming off of dark hair. A woman. She glanced quickly from side to side with the jerky movements of a small bird, and then dashed out across the damp expanse of asphalt, straight for the Impala.

Dean's eyebrows rose as he continued to watch. What the hell? She'd hunkered down next to the wheels, waddling along in a squat and then craning up to peer through the windows. Clearly, she wasn't a professional stalker. Dean began to doubt that she was even a monster. But, in that case, she was one weird-ass human; she was now stroking the passenger-side handle.

He decided it was time to intervene. Tucking the knife into his jacket, he swung back out the door with his eyebrows creased in a tight line down the middle. This time, he made no attempt to act natural and instead marched straight up to the lady and said, "The hell you doing to my car?"

The woman fell over in surprise, popping blue eyes matching the O of her mouth as she stared up at Dean. For a moment, she just sat there on her ass, a look of total awe on her face as if she'd just had some holy epiphany, but Dean figured his glare must've brought her out of it because, after a second, she hopped awkwardly to her feet and said, "Your car — your vehicle… the registration has expired." With a shake to her step, she pussy-footed around to the back of the car and pointed at the little sticker on the license plate. "See. It says 2008, but it's 2009. You can't be driving this."

Dean scowled and stalked after her to squint down at the registration sticker, which did, indeed, say "2008."

"Yeah, and who are you—" His scowl deepened as he stumbled for words. "—the car registration police?"

"I'm an author," the woman announced, puffing up as if he'd offended her.

Dean's eyebrows had gone beyond knit and were now practically felted together. "Then what the hell does it matter to you? I'm a good driver; it's not like I'm gonna run over your cat or anything."

Seemingly gaining confidence, the stick-like, bony-jointed woman declared, "It has nothing to do with that. It's about emission standards. A car like this—" She patted the roof. "—probably doesn't meet the new requirements."

Now it was Dean's turn to puff. _Don't listen to her, baby_, he thought at the Impala, before saying out loud, "Lady, I don't know who you think you are, but nobody… Nobody… gets to say shit like that about my car."

The woman hesitated under Dean's frown, but her desperation beat down her fear and she burst out, "I want to study you for my book."

This wasn't at all the direction Dean had expected the conversation to go, and, for a split second, his face opened up in surprise, but it soon went flat again. He turned away from her and began to head back to his motel room. "No."

She jogged after him, bony arms flapping to emphasize her words. "Come on, it will be fun!" she said. "Haven't you ever imagined what it would be like to be in a book?"

"I don't have to imagine," Dean said, "and, trust me… not fun."

When they reached the door, she stopped, a fire burning in the depths of her saucer-like eyes. "Then I'll report you to the DMV."

One hand on the doorframe, Dean turned only his head to shoot her an exasperated look. "So I'll get a fine; I think I can handle it."

The woman shifted uncomfortably on her feet, but the spark of triumph was shining from the pupils of her baby-blues, and she was shaking her head. "Your car will have to be inspected to make sure it meets the new emission standards," she explained, "and there's no way on earth that you can explain all that stuff they'll find in your trunk."

Dean turned all the way around now. "How do you know what's in my trunk?" he demanded. "How long you been following me?"

Expression going indignant, the woman protested, "I _haven't_ been following you!" But the firm line of her mouth weakened under Dean's stare. Eventually it collapsed completely. "Okay maybe," she admitted with a sheepish shrug, "but that doesn't change anything. Do you _want_ your car searched?"

Dean's fingers tightened around the gray wood of the doorframe. His jaw clenched, unclenched and clenched again, but none of this produced any solutions to the problem that now faced him, so, after a couple very troubling moments, he spat out, "What do you want?"

"Just to study you. I won't cause any trouble; I just want to follow you around for a few weeks."

"Oh… just a few weeks," he repeated sarcastically.

"Please," the woman said. "Please, please, please! You have no idea how much I need this."

No, he didn't. He _did_ know that the good and moral thing to do in this situation was to deny the crazy lady's request, take whatever punishment, and keep her out of the line of fire… Dean, however, was feeling less than saintly right then, so he just growled, "It's your funeral," and slammed the door behind him.

Closed out of the room, the woman's clunky joints were almost quivering with excitement, but she forced herself to sound casual as she asked, "So, when are you leaving?"

"One hour," the man's voice, now muted, shouted back through the door.

The woman nodded, although no one was there to see, and then tried, "What's your name?"

There was a pause. "Glen Burtnik."

"I'm Anne," the woman said. There was no response. She shuffled a little and then admitted, "I don't have a car."

"Well you're sure as hell not riding with me!"

…

One hour and five minutes later, the Impala slouched out of the Day-N-Nyte's parking lot, Dean behind the wheel and Anne, with her face towards the window to hide her ridiculous grin, in the passenger's seat.

"Don't touch the roof. Don't touch the windows. Don't touch the stereo," Dean commanded, scowl etched deep in the line between his eyebrows. "In fact, just don't touch anything." Then, as an afterthought, he added firmly, "And no complaining about the tunes."

Anne nodded, putting on her most doe-like, most sincere eyes, though in reality she'd hardly heard a word he'd said. She was itching to get going. Here she was with a guy she knew next-to-nothing about, hitting the road to who-knew where with less than a hundred dollars in cash, two maxed credit cards, one bag of clothes and toiletries, a notepad, and a laptop… It was a writer's dream! She made careful note of every experience, jotting it down on the notepad as they rolled west out of town on the main street.

_November 5__th__ 2009_, she wrote. _Leaving Hornbeak, Tennessee. Sun bristles off the lovingly washed and polished hood of the car, nearly blinding as it reflects back through the windshield. Through the speakers, the funky rhythm of—_

"What song is this?"

Dean glanced over in evident surprise before noticing the notepad and turning back to the road, frown returning. "Ramble On," he grumbled. "You know who Led Zeppelin is, right?"

"Oh yeah," she said with a careless nod as she set back to her notes. "They were a big name forty years ago."

Dean turned to retort this statement, realized that he had nothing to say and that Anne was too busy with her notes to notice him anyway, and glared back at the road with a scowl. "You were a big name forty years ago," he mumbled, more to himself than to anyone else.

Anne, of course, didn't hear.

_To my left_, she scrawled, _is Glen Burtnik. He sits very stiffly behind the wheel, gripping it more tightly than necessary. Clearly, he's thrown off by having someone else in the car; he's become accustomed to life as a lone wolf and convinced himself that he's happy that way. His short hair is neat, but not too neat. He probably spent several minutes in the mirror making sure of this so that people will think that he doesn't try. He narrows his—_

"What color are your eyes?"

"What?" Dean frowned, head once again snapping towards his unwelcome guest.

"Green? Brown? Hazel?"

"I don't know," he said. "Figure it out for yourself."

_He narrows his hazel eyes as if just following the yellow lines down the middle of the road absorbs all his concentration, but really he's deep in thought._

Dean shifted uncomfortably. "What are you writing?" he asked, sticking with the scowl even as his skin crawled.

"They're just notes," Anne said. She peered up cautiously. "About you and the car. Nothing to worry about."

"Huh," Dean said. He hunched down a bit into his jacket. Being studied was just as unpleasant as he'd suspected.

_Before us stretches hundreds of miles of ill-repaired but open road. Right now, we're passing fields, which have already gone brown in preparation for winter. However, the sun glitters from the dewdrops that have gotten caught in the dead stalks, and this gives the land the magical illusion of life. Also gleaming, white-washed houses rise up from the grass, each lonely but proud, and every few minutes a car passes in the opposite direction. This part of Tennessee doesn't get a lot of tourists._

Anne turned to get the view out the rear window, but, as she craned over the back of her seat, she felt something tickle her chin. She peered down at it — a hair… A relic… A clue! As if her fingers were an archaeologist's tweezers, she plucked it rapturously from the leather and laid it out across her palm with great care, bending over to make a closer study. It was a longish hair. Brown, although the exact shade was difficult to determine against the pale pink of her skin. A young and vital hair, she decided; its owner must've been under forty and had a good diet… probably a hygiene freak, too. Tucking her prize delicately into the notepad, she twisted around to scour the rest of the seat.

Dean glanced at her out of the corner of his eyes. He'd been trying to ignore the scratching of her pen and the jerky movements of her head, but when she began to pluck at the Impala's seats with her creepy, skinny-ass fingers, he couldn't take it anymore.

"What are you doing?"

As if she hadn't realized he could see her, her face snapped up with a blush. "I'm collecting hairs," she admitted, and, although slightly embarrassed, made no attempt to hide as she stretched out her new-found gold across a blank page in the notepad. "Whose are they?"

Dean knew exactly whose they were. His eyes locked back onto the stretch of asphalt directly ahead. "None of your business."

"Ex-girlfriend? Tough breakup?" And then, as if remembering herself, "Not that I mean to pry."

"Oh, honey," Dean smiled wryly, "you're long past prying."

Anne pretended not to have heard this. Her eyes darted across Dean's face, narrowing as they completed their examination. Then she began to write again.

_Just a few weeks ago, a pretty brunette sat where I do now, no doubt singing along to Glen's archaic tape collection. Just as he's nostalgic for a past musical age, Glen can't let go of his former sweetheart, who left an oozing wound in his heart when she took off without even a proper goodbye._

Dean couldn't keep his concentration. "What are you writing now?"

"If you won't tell me about your life," Anne said defensively, gripping the notepad more tightly, "then I have to deduce what I can from the available information."

"Who are you? Miss Marple?"

Anne's eyes lit up at this new tidbit. "You read Agatha Christie?"

"No," Dean said quickly. "Just heard the name." He shook his head, scowl returning. "Don't sidetrack the conversation. What did you write about me?"

Anne's eyes narrowed. "I said you got dumped by your girlfriend," she stated bluntly, "and that you can't get over it."

"What?" Dean protested. "But that's not true! You can't just… make things up like that!"

"I'm an author. I can make up anything I want," she said, self-importance seeping from the thin line of her smile. But then, with a sly glance his way, she stuck on, "Unless you want to tell me what really happened."

"No," Dean said.

"Fine." Anne brandished her pen, jamming it down into the paper like the tip of a sword. "Then her name was Gillian. She broke up with you twelve days ago because you were too distant and wouldn't open up, and you've cried every night since. When you shower, you use the bar of soap that she forgot so that you can smell her while you sleep. It's peony-scented. _And_," she added with a self-satisfied thrust of her pointy chin, "_And_ you keep a strand of her lovely brown hair tied around your finger at all times. _That_, Glen Burtnik, is what will go down in history unless you decide that you have something to add."

Dean shrugged, although underneath he was deeply unsettled. "Write away, sweetheart," he said, not letting his nerves shine through. "You're not getting a peep out of me."

Anne rose her dark eyebrows in a gesture that, plain as day, said, "Fine." With sharp stabs of her wrist, she began to move the pen across the paper, and there, on the thin pages of her notepad, the sad and lonely life of Glen Burtnik began to take shape.


	6. Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6:

Sam and his prisoner had marched straight through the night, and, by the time the sun rose, they were both stumbling, accumulating more scratches from the brambles and low branches in one hour than they had over the past six.

Sam, of course, was exhausted. Not only had he been awake for nearly two full days now, but he still hadn't gotten around to draining a bit of medicine… or poison or whatever… out of the weirdo demon, and damn did he feel like crap. His fever had soared to new highs. His muscles had given up on their unpredictable spasms and set into a constant shiver as chills, both hot and cold, clawed their way up his back, and he was drenched — head to toe to everywhere else — in sweat. Despite this, he hadn't peeled off any of his outer layers of clothing because, as he knew was often the case with high fevers, he could never make up his mind whether he was burning or freezing. It had been a long and frustrating battle with various sensory neurons rooting for each side, but it was still stalemated up in the twists and turns of Sam's pounding brain. All he could determine was that, from head to toe to everywhere else, he felt like crap.

The demon was in equally bad shape. Tall but of a build that only a stick bug would dream of calling athletic, he wasn't up for seventeen miles of hiking barefoot through thorns and mud, up steep and slippery hillsides in only his pajamas. In fact, he wasn't up for seventeen miles of anything, and he was sweating nearly as badly as Sam by the time the first rays of sunlight began to poke at his head. His throat, too, had gone completely raw from sucking in the sharp, cold air, so it was with a resentful catch in his voice that he said (not for the first time), "I can't believe you didn't bring water."

Sam, sick of the complaints, sick of the demon, and just generally sick, stared straight ahead without replying.

"Seriously, dude," the demon went on, "this sucks." He would've gone on to explain exactly how much it sucked, but he'd just stepped on his thirty-seventh thorn, and the sudden stab interrupted his flow. He limped on for the next few minutes, glancing over his shoulder every couple seconds to shoot Sam a pointed frown as if to say, "This is all your fault, you know."

Sam knew; he just didn't care. He had a whole crap-load of his own issues to deal with, and a demon with sore feet didn't come close to making the list. Anyway, if the idiot would just shut up and watch where he was walking, it wouldn't be anybody's problem!

Perhaps the demon realized this, or perhaps it was just stewing in its own hellish juices, but either way, after stepping on the thirty-seventh thorn it remained perfectly silent until they reached their destination thirty minutes later. They'd been hiking up a slow incline for the past couple miles, and, as the earth below their feet dried, the willows had given way to pines: not the tall, straight-backed variety that grew in the mountains and flats further east, but the hunched coastal kind that refused to spread more than a dozen leagues from the violent shores of the Pacific. They were low, lumpy, awkward trees, limbs bent in all the wrong places as if they'd been broken and poorly reset, and they watched Sam and his hostage pass below with old and suspicious eyes.

They stopped behind a huckleberry bush on the edge of a campground, crouching low in the foliage in order to survey the proceedings without being spotted. Actually, Sam surveyed the proceedings; the demon hunted for huckleberries in a futile attempt to quench his thirst.

"Come on, dude," he said. "There's a water spigot right there. Literally, thirty feet away."

Sam kept staring straight ahead. "You don't need to drink," he said dismissively. "You're a demon. A totally out-of-your-mind demon, but still a demon."

The demon frowned at him as it chewed up another handful of tart, black berries. "Fine," it said. "I'd _like_ to drink. And I'm not out-of-my-mind; I've gone native… big difference."

Sam ignored this, squinting in at the two groups that had chosen to stake out at this campground. One group was made up of five youngish guys, probably five to ten years older than Sam. They were big, back-woodsy people with beards and fishing vests, but fully human. Right now they were frying up some trout for breakfast, the smoky, charred scent hanging thick in the morning air. Several sites away, through a clump of trees and brush, Sam could just make out another group: a middle-aged woman and two teenage girls. They were all harmless.

"You can get your water in a minute," Sam said as he turned back towards the demon, "but we've gotta do something else first."

The demon swallowed the berries and gave him a funny look. "What's that?" It had already spotted the knife in Sam's hand, but it only now realized how tightly he was gripping the handle, skin stretched eerily thin over knuckle bones. It began to lean away.

"Give me your arm," Sam said, reaching out with the hand that wasn't locked around the blade.

The demon continued to inch back, darting a glance through the huckleberry bush at the group of fishermen. "I usually take pride in being able to take care of myself," he told Sam, "but I _will_ scream. My guess is, with all five of those guys, you'd be pretty screwed, dude."

Sam didn't have time for this type of shit. He snatched up the demon's arm and, with a condescending arch of his brows, said, "Relax, _dude_. If I was going to exorcise or torture you, I already would've done it. I just want some blood."

Before the demon had time to do anything but open its mouth in protest, Sam flicked the blade out across the soft skin on the underside of its forearm.

"Ow!" it said, more in shock than pain, as it stared with wide brown eyes at the red line that had sprouted from its skin.

Sam squeezed the wound over his cupped palm, earning another "Ow! Dude!" from the demon, and then they both stared as the hot liquid dribbled down to fill the creases between Sam's fingers. Once his palm was full, he downed it right away, the taste salty and metallic in his mouth. But as it slipped down into his stomach, he could feel the tremors stilling themselves; the pounding in his head quieted; the sweat dried up; the fever slunk away, and bright, burning energy burst up from the lowest reaches of his feet to the uppermost layer of his skull. God. _That_ was what he'd needed! He breathed in several more times, relishing the sensation of power in his veins before he noticed the demon staring at him, blood still dripping from its arm onto the needle-spotted earth with a quiet tap, tap.

Its nose crinkled up. "Are you a witch?"

Sam tore a strip of bandaging from the roll in his pocket and knotted it unceremoniously around the demon's wound. "Sure," he said. "Whatever you want."

The demon poked gingerly at the white cotton that now covered its cut, shooting resentful bat also slightly curious looks up at Sam. "So…" he began, "am I free to go now?"

Sam's eyebrows rose and one corner of his mouth twitched up almost imperceptibly, whether in a smile or a smirk was difficult to say. "No," he told the demon. "But, buddy… I gotta say, you are the _weirdest_ demon I've ever met, and I've met a lot."

The demon pouted a bit, but it didn't look too pissed off about sticking around. It certainly didn't try to smoke out or run away. Instead, he said, "Like I told you: I'm reformed."

"Yeah, but what does that even mean?"

The demon stood up. "You know what," he said. "I'm gonna go get my water; you should probably… clean that up." He waved generally in Sam's direction. "And then we can talk."

Sam, eyebrows climbing still higher, pushed himself up next to the demon with a little shrug. "Fine," he said, "water first. But then you've got some serious crap to explain."

"Oh, I'm the one with crap?" the demon snorted, glancing back as it squeezed between the scratchy trunks of two pines. "Dude, sometime you gotta look in a mirror."


	7. Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7:

"So what's the deal?" the demon asked as he slid onto the damp seat of a picnic bench. "If you're not a witch, then what in fuck's name are you, dude?"

Sam shot the demon a warning glance as he dropped down onto the opposite bench. The five fishermen weren't more than fifty yards away, and he thought it would be best for everybody if they didn't overhear. "Lower your voice," he growled.

The demon followed Sam's gaze towards the bearded men without the slightest trace of concern. "I have a feeling we can take them."

Sam's nose wrinkled up and he jerked his head away from the demon with a short but sharp glare. Who in God's name did this guy think he was? "There's no 'we,' here," he said. "There's you, and there's me—" He cut a line between them with his hand. "—Totally separate entities. And you're explaining yourself before I tell you anything." His eyes narrowed. "What's your name?"

The demon slouched down with a resentful little frown for Sam. "I'm Gavin," it said.

"Alright… Gavin," Sam pressed on, resting his elbows up on the scarred wood of the table. He didn't let the demon escape his stare. "What do you mean when you say you're reformed?"

"I mean that hell sucks, dude!" he said. "Now more than ever. It's not just making deals and torturing souls anymore; everybody has all these big plans now, and I don't want to be down there fighting for Azazel, Lilith or any of the other big-timers." He was on a roll. "They don't know how to repay loyalty for shit! The most I'd get for helping anybody out would probably be to not get tortured for _not_ helping them out." Gavin had clearly been storing up this rant for a while and had a lot more to say, but he stopped himself with a shrug, as if realizing that he'd lost his cool. "So I picked option number two," he said, forcing himself to sound casual again. "I came up here and went into hiding." He smiled and patted his chest. "I assimilated."

Sam didn't return the smile. "Who are you possessing?"

"What, Nikhil? Dude, me and him are practically family," the demon said dismissively. "I mean, I've been living with his adoptive family for the past seven years, and we've been sharing this body since he was, like, twelve…" He trailed off as he noticed the look that Sam was giving him. "Oh, come on, dude," he said. "What was I supposed to do?"

"Stay in hell," Sam suggested, voice cold.

The scruffy black lines of Gavin's eyebrows hiked up his forehead. "Then why haven't you sent me back, Mr. Demons-are-_soooo_-far-beneath-me?"

"I need you," Sam replied shortly, not rising to the challenge in the demon's tone.

Gavin stared at him with intent black eyes. "You need my blood at least," he said. When Sam looked away, the demon leaned forward, tongue flicking out across his lips. "Why?" he asked. "What are you? Some creepo kind of vampire?"

Sam made himself turn back towards Gavin with a roll of his eyes. "Buddy, you've let yourself fall way too far off the grid."

"What do you mean? No more vampires?"

"No. I mean no more Lilith. No more Azazel. Hell's under new management."

The dark skin around the demon's eyes pulled into skeptical creases as it surveyed Sam's face. "Okay," he said. "So who's in charge?"

Sam smiled wryly. "Lucifer is."

The corners of Gavin's mouth curled upwards as he relaxed back into his seat. "Sure, dude; _I'm_ the one who's fallen off the grid. Don't you know that Lucifer's been locked up in, like, the deepest pit of hell since…" He waved his hands through the air. "Well… since basically forever?"

Sam snorted. "It's been a busy couple years," he said.

"Okay, fine," Gavin said, licking his lips and raising his eyebrows in a challenge. "So how'd he get out then?"

Sam wondered vaguely why he was telling the demon any of this. If he was going to keep the bastard around, though, someone would probably spill the beans sooner or later. It might as well be sooner… So, biting his lip but trying to sound calm, Sam said, "I opened his cage."

"Shut up," the demon smirked. "How the fuck'd you do that?"

Unlike Gavin, Sam did not find any of this amusing. He looked away to focus on the nearest pine tree, and his voice was flat and distant as he said, "Lilith spent all last year breaking seals. A few of the angels, me, another hunter…" He hesitated before adding, "my brother… we were trying to stop her. I thought killing her was the answer." He turned back to the demon as he stuck on his defense: "We all did. But it wasn't, and instead I ended up opening the cage."

The demon's black brows arched high on his forehead, and disbelief was thick in his tone as he said, "You _killed_ Lilith? Dude, you can't _kill_ a demon. We're already dead."

Sam snorted. "Like I said: you've really fallen off the grid."

The demon's eyebrows remained arched. "You know what," he said, standing up and swinging his legs over the bench. "I thought you were interesting, but I'm pretty sure now that you're just insane, so… it's been fun, dude, but I'm out."

Really? Sam spared a quick glance over at the fishermen. They were much closer than he would've liked, but he didn't want to go through the trouble of finding another demon, not when he had a perfectly serviceable one right here, so he shot his arm under the table. Just as the demon opened its mouth to smoke out, Sam focused his mind and caught it. It had been nearly a month since he'd actually used his powers, and, although he felt beyond clumsy, he had enough juice at the moment that it didn't matter. Gavin choked. His face scrunched up in confusion as he tried again. Idiot hadn't worked it out, yet. After his second attempt to smoke out was blocked, though, he turned to stare at Sam in evident horror. Speechless, his eyes widened to round, black coins.

Sam reeled him back towards the picnic table with a flick of his wrist. "I don't drink blood for fun," he said as Gavin's shins knocked into the bench. "I drink blood so that I can do this. Like it or not, you're staying because, from this point forward, you're my personal cooler."

Sam released the demon and he fell to the ground with a gasped, "Ow!" which made Sam's lip twitch up on one side. Served the bastard right.

Pine needles and sap stuck to his hands, Gavin clawed his way back onto the bench. To Sam's surprise, all his teeth were showing, mouth pulled back into a wide smile. "Dude," he said, shaking his head. "Who are you?"

"Um… Sam Winchester," Sam said.

"Well, Sam, I apologize. It will be my honor to serve as your personal cooler for however long you need. We're going to have a great time together; I can already tell."

Despite the warning bells this set off in Sam's mind, he merely nodded.

"So," Gavin said, still beaming broadly. "What are we doing first?"

"First," Sam said, sparing the demon one last wary look, "we need money."


	8. Chapter 8

**Hey y'all. For anyone who actually reads this story, I'm sorry I haven't posted anything in several days. I'm also going to apologize for this being another Sam chapter, but I promise the next one will jump back over to Dean. In general, posting is probably going to slow down a lot after this because school's going to start again, but I'll keep posting when I can. That's all. Hope you like it.**

* * *

CHAPTER 8:

Since it turned out that the fishermen were heading out that day, Sam and Gavin managed to catch a ride in the bed of their truck as far south as Ferndale. The size of the town, however, was disappointing — one street of touristy shops, a few block of residential to either side, and then farmland — which meant stealing a car was going to be a hell of a lot harder than usual. On top of this, both Sam and the demon were beyond exhausted. The fishermen had kept shooting them suspicious looks through the back window during the car ride, and this had been enough of a stimulant to Sam's already jacked-up brain that he couldn't get his eyes to close. None of this was going to help in the tricky business of obtaining a vehicle… and then cash, too, because there was no way in hell Sam was spending a night in a car with the freaky demon kid.

As soon as they were out on Ferndale's sidewalks, watching the big Ford truck rumble away, Gavin turned towards Sam with pursed lips. "Dude," he said, "why'd we do any of that?"

"Any of what?" Sam said without looking at the demon. He'd begun scanning the place for promising side streets the moment his shoes hit the pavement, and, now that he thought he'd spotted one, he wasted no time in striding towards it.

Gavin, annoyed at being brushed aside, jogged after with an irritated and audible exhale. "Any of the really sucky shit we just did?" he said. "Why'd you drag me through the goddamn jungle if we were just going to get right back on the highway?"

Sam turned the corner onto his chosen stretch of road with a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure none of the passerby were watching. "People are probably going to try and track me down eventually," he said, distracted as he swept his gaze along the skimpy row of cars before him. "My brother, for instance. Maybe some angels and a decently experienced hunter or two. Probably demons." He shrugged. "I'd rather not leave a clear trail from point A to B." With a little smirk back at the demon, he added, "So get used to back roads, kid."

"Fuck you, dude; I'm, like, eighty-five! What are you, thirty?"

Despite himself, Sam looked offended. "Twenty-six," he corrected, shooting Gavin a short but dirty glare over his shoulder before tugging the slim jim out of his jacket. The vehicle he'd selected was an unassuming gray Honda, and he slipped in the slim jim as casually as if he was using a pair of keys to open the door. "Thirty," he mumbled to himself darkly as he slipped into the driver's seat, and then out loud he commanded, "Get in the car, old man."

The demon complied, but he snapped the door shut behind him with a little huff. "I'd prefer to be called Gavin."

Sam didn't look up. "Gavin," he muttered as the wires in his fingers sparked and the car rumbled to life, "nobody cares."

The demon was stonily silent after that, and there was a full hour of asphalt behind them before it decided that its point had been made and asked, "So… what's your big plan to get cash?"

Although surprised by Gavin's voice, Sam kept his gaze leveled at the road. "No big plan. When we have to stop to get gas, I'm going to try to find a bar with a pool table."

"You hustle?" The demon's lips curled back in distaste. "Dude. So not cool."

"Right," Sam said, "because obviously you have a better plan in mind."

Of course he did. "Steal."

"No."

"Dude, it's basically the same thing… only it's faster, you get more out of it, and you can select your targets better. Either way, you're ripping somebody off."

"It's not the same."

"Whatever," the demon said, but he couldn't leave it for long. "I've just been wondering…" Sam's eyebrows rose in a complete lack of surprise. Had he really? Who would've guessed? Gavin continued without noticing. "Your little blood hoodoo thing," he said. "Is it just demons?"

"Yes," Sam said, brows falling hard and crashing together. "Just demons."

Gavin wasn't stupid. "Sure," he drawled, and his lip curled up at Sam. "Forgot you were a righteous little bugger."

"I'm not lying," he said stiffly. "It only works on demons."

"But…" Gavin stuck on, voice rising at the end along with his eyebrows, inviting Sam to elaborate.

Sam twitched. He could feel the intent lick of the demon's dark eyes over his face. "There were others," he eventually admitted, "like me. And…" He shrugged. "Well, who knows, but some of them had different abilities." Andy. Lily. Jake. "Said it was _amazing what you could do if you gave in_." He forced his lips to twitch up, trying to convince both himself and the demon that he stood in contempt of this philosophy. He failed… on the latter half at least.

"If you _could_ do that to people," the demon pressed, "you know what it would mean?"

"Yeah, I do," Sam said. He sneered, but it rang hollow because in reality he wasn't amused at all. "It would mean I was a monster."

Gavin didn't register that Sam's smooth scorn was covering up real fear. His voice was eager as he quickly breathed, "No, dude, it would mean you could get money from people who didn't need it and didn't have anything good to do with it. It would mean you could not embarrass some poor fucker in front of a room full of drunk dudes." He licked his lips as his eyes drank in Sam's expression. "It would mean you wouldn't have to worry about demons _or _humans on your ass."

Sam jerked his head to face the demon. A deep crease settled between his eyebrows and his eyes themselves were narrowed coldly. "And why do you want that?"

Gavin straightened, his own eyebrows fluttering up. "Me?" he said. "I just want to be protected." He batted his eyelashes in mock flirtation and added, "Don't you know you're my hero, Sam Winchester?" Seeing the expression on Sam's face he dropped the act. "You can keep me away from the front line," he said in firmer tones. "No demon can touch us right now, and if you get the human hoodoo thing going, too, then no hunter can either. I'd be one hundred percent cozy safe."

Sam acted as if none of the demon's words had had the slightest effect. "You know, Gavin," he said. "I can get another demon any time."

Gavin smiled and, in his mind, where only the ghostly presence of Nikhil could hear, said: _But you won't._

…

They'd made it all the way to Angels Camp by the time Sam decided it wasn't safe for him to drive anymore. Lack of sleep had started to mess with his focus, and the road, darkening along with the sky, was wobbling and blurring before his eyes. Anyway… Angels Camp was a good place to stop in and of itself. About seven hours south and east of Ferndale's hideout on the northern California coast, Angels Camp was a historical town nestled into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains: a place where it was much more likely to find a pool table in a bar (and people at that bar) than most cities on the coast. Claussen's Corner fit the bill perfectly. The room was loud and darkly lit, the alcohol cheap, and there was even an old jukebox against the back wall. Talk about ambiance! Sam, however, was not in the mood to appreciate it. The noises of incautious laughter, babbling people, and the music beat against his eardrums painfully. It was too loud, and he was too tired. The only reason that his sleep-slogged brain eventually forced him to step through the door was because it had spotted the stained green felt of the pool table in the far corner.

But Gavin caught his arm. "Exactly what do you plan to do?" he shouted over the lilting roar of bar life.

Sam, blinking hard, tugged easily out of Gavin's grip. "Order a few drinks. Pretend to get drunk. Lose a bunch and then win on a final high bet."

Gavin shook his head. "Dude," he said, surveying the bar scathingly. "If you really won't just man up and steal, then I've got a much better way to pull this off."

Again: of course he did. Sam crossed his arms. Why couldn't the idiot have brought it up sooner? But all he said was, "Oh yeah?"

"Yeah," Gavin said, "but it's gonna take a bit more time. Anyway…" He smirked up into the shadowed, stretched skin around Sam's eyes, "you're not winning anything tonight. We might as well spend one more day in this town and hit the bars tomorrow."

Sam frowned. The car, which had proved to have a much larger, fuller tank and more impressive gas mileage than anyone would've expected, had finally crapped out. They'd already refilled it twice and they barely had enough money to refill it again, not nearly enough for a room, so that meant they'd be sleeping where they were parked. Well fuck; that's exactly what Sam had been trying to avoid, but the demon bastard was right. He was too tired to guarantee victory tonight, and he couldn't afford to risk losing the little he had, so, with a final exhausted glower for Gavin, he allowed himself to be led out of the bar and back to the little Honda, where he collapsed into the driver's seat.

"You're not going to stab me or run off in the night, are you Gavin?" he mumbled.

Gavin stretched out across the back. "No, dude," he said. Then he yawned, and his voice got less distinct as he went on. "Much as the immediate situation sucks, we're cut out to accomplish great things together. So sleep tight, Sam Winchester…" He yawned again. "The demonic bugs won't bite."

Sam snorted, but he couldn't hold off the falling curtains of exhaustion forever, and within minutes his brain had shut down.

Gavin also fell asleep, but he made sure not to go too deep under, so that, an hour later, when Sam was out like the dead, he woke up and slipped out of the car. There were still people milling about on the lamp-lit street, and Gavin melted into them with practiced ease. He meandered aimlessly, peering through restaurant windows and the closed display cases of gift shops and clothing boutiques until his dark eyes located a young woman heading down a side street by herself. As he followed, he reached his hand into the pocket of his pajama pants to grip the handle of a fork, which he'd stolen from a table at Claussen's Corner. No one noticed as he snuck around the corner, out of the orangey glow of artificial light and into the black of the surrounding night. The woman ahead of him certainly didn't notice. She simply continued to walk… quickly, but not so quickly that Gavin couldn't gain on her. And gain he did. Forty paces shrunk to thirty shrunk to twenty shrunk to ten, all the while moving further into the cold, empty black of a sleeping neighborhood.

Gavin's eyes remained focused and hard. He was close enough to reach out and grab her now, strike the fork across her neck and draw out that perfect red liquid. But he didn't. He hesitated, continuing to trail two feet behind. In his mind, Nikhil, who usually remained fairly quiet, was screaming his head off.

_No!_ he was yelling. _No, no, no!_

_Stop saying that, dude_, Gavin snapped. _What's the issue?_ Of course, he knew what the issue was. He wasn't gung-ho pain and slaughter and all that typical demonic stuff. He was reformed. He liked his quiet life with Nikhil's family on the sparsely inhabited, fog-swallowed California coast, now far gone to the north. He liked waking up every morning feeling safe and warm and… human.

…but it also got boring.

_The issue_, Nikhil spluttered, thankful that he was getting listened to for once, _is that you're about to kill somebody. I thought you were different than other demons? You said you were different, that you didn't like hurting people, that you wanted out. _The tone of Nikhil's thoughts was accusatory. He'd been trapped with Gavin in his head for the last seven years, and he'd long passed the point of fear. He now felt perfectly comfortable giving the demon a piece of his mind, and give it he did. _What on earth made you suddenly up and change your mind like that?_

_It's not like I'm killing her for fun, _Gavin protested, a frown sketching across his face as he continued to tiptoe in the young woman's unsuspecting footsteps. He watched her blond ponytail swing, listened to the friction of her jeans as her legs rubbed past each other. It was true; he didn't have any burning desire to feel her blood on his hands; it wouldn't give him any thrill to watch her eyes shudder open in fear as she died… _But I need her. This is a once in a fucking lifetime chance_. He chuckled darkly in his mind. _Once in a death-time_, he corrected. _Even rarer. The Winchester kid's right; I've been off the charts for too long, and now I need answers._

Nikhil couldn't believe it. Seven years of being possessed and he'd never had to do anything outside of his regular routine. Then suddenly last night, some weirdo named Sam Winchester had broken in and grabbed him, and ever since it was like the whole world was going nuts. Blood drinking? A bunch of random demons he'd never heard mentioned before? Strange mental powers? He felt like he'd been plunged right into the heart of a conversation in a foreign language, and everyone else wasn't just acting like he understood the language… no, they seemed to think that he'd been there for the whole first part of the conversation. But he hadn't. He had no clue what was going on, so he just spluttered again before saying, _You're going to kill a girl for answers? What answers are you going to get from that? _And then,_ What on earth is that important to know?_

_I'm going to talk to another demon, _Gavin explained. He didn't have to explain; he didn't need Nikhil's approval to kill the girl. Really, he didn't have to listen to him at all. He could black him out and essentially have the body all to himself… But he didn't want to do that. He wanted Nikhil on board. _I've been hiding in you for too long. It seems that Hell and Heaven have both been busy bees in the meantime, and I can't take it for granted that Sam Winchester told me everything. Fuck! He probably doesn't even know everything! As to why it's important?_ He smiled grimly to himself. _Well… I have a sneaking suspicion that something big — and I mean really fucking big, dude — is about to happen, and I don't want us to get caught with our pants down when it does._

Nikhil raised his voice in protest again, but Gavin had made up his mind. He slipped the fork out of his pocket to the background chant of _No, no, no!_ and raised it to throat level. Then he lunged. She didn't have time to scream. It was over in three quick seconds with her steaming blood cradled in his palms, her body still on the sidewalk in front of him, a glistening pool spreading out and dripping into the gutter with a quiet plunk-plunk that reminded him of how the fog plopped off of pine needles back home on the northern coast.

Nikhil's voice faded out as Gavin contemplated the blood. Maybe he liked it after all… so hot and thick, the surface so smooth. Even though it was too dark to see it, he could imagine the color. Rich red: deeper than the most expensive dress, purer than the most exquisite rose. How had he forgotten how beautiful it was?

With a last wistful smile at the glass-like sheen on the liquid, he began to chant softly, words that he thought he'd forgotten spilling over his lips with relish. _Once a demon, always a demon_, he mused. Reform was a lie.

From the blood cupped in his dark hands, a voice suddenly bubbled up.

"Who is this?" it said sharply. A female voice.

"Denice?" Gavin said uncertainly. "It's Gavin."

"Ah, the little fuckup," the voice bubbled, losing a bit of its edge. "Yeah, this is Denice. But I don't know why you bothered calling. I ain't telling you shit. You fucked up bad, and when you get your skinny little ass back down here, you're in for one boiling stew of shit."

"Hold your tits," Gavin said. "I just need information."

"Fuck you," Denice purred through the blood. "Hold on to your own tits, why don't you? Anyway, what d'ya wanna know? No promises I'm gonna tell you, but I'll hear you out. It's been what, ten years since we talked?"

"Give or take," he nodded. "That's the problem actually. I've been lying low since I disobeyed Alastair's orders. Just jumped back into the game, and fuck, it seems like a lot's happened while I've been out."

"Mmhmm," Denice agreed drily. "It's been raining shitloads these past few years. Azazel's big plan kicked into motion, but then he got killed. Alastair got the first seal broken; then Lilith started really making it rain; then Alastair got himself tied up by angels and killed, and then Lilith got killed, and now Lucifer's up and chugging again. Upstairs, downstairs… everybody's gearing up for one hell of a showdown. Anyway, that's the skinny of it. You wanna know more?"

"Hell yeah," Gavin said, breathing in sharply as much of what the Winchester kid had said was confirmed. "I mean, I don't even know what Azazel's big plan was."

Denice snorted. "Old yellow eyes," she muttered, voice dark but amused. "He was supposed to find a kid to lead the demon army. Got a whole bunch of little fuckers hopped up on demon blood way back when they were babies and then had them fight it out to get a winner who was supposed to lead the demon army, but the kid didn't really step up to the plate at first. Lilith ended up in charge… until he killed her."

"Who killed her?"

"Azazel's special little baby. Sammy Winchester."

Now Gavin's lips spread themselves into a smile. That's what he'd been waiting for. "Sam Winchester," he repeated, unable to completely prevent his voice from revealing the satisfied smirk that had settled across his face. "He has special powers?"

"You better fucking believe it," Denice said. "He didn't just kill Lilith. He killed Alastair, too, and he flings the rest of us about like toothpicks. Fucking disgraceful's what it is. But the boss doesn't want him hurt; just wants him found. Brother, too. The pair of them's worth more than a kitten on a stick if you catch my drift. Ain't a thing in Heaven or Hell that the big man wants more than the Winchesters right now."

"Do you know why?"

"Why he wants them?"

"Yeah."

Denice didn't respond immediately. "Why don't you get your ass down here and have the bigger fish fill you in themselves."

Gavin's smirk spread wider. "Oh no. I think I have something much sweeter going on up here, but I've still gotta know: what does he want the Winchesters for?"

Denice hesitated, then said, "I'll tell you, but it's big, ya know? Real fucking big." Gavin knew where this was going. "I wanna know what you got going first," she said. "And if it is sweet as you say, then I want in."

Gavin growled to himself, but forced his voice to stay liquor smooth as he said, "Only because it's you, sweetie, but you've gotta promise not to tell any of your friends."

Denice snorted, but he could almost feel her hunger bubbling up through the cooling liquid. "You got it."

"Alright," Gavin breathed. "My set up is that I've got Sam Winchester, and not just in eyeshot; I mean I'm in with him."

"Fuck!" Denice's voice spiked with excitement. "Well don't go turning him in or nothing! Nobody knows how to reward honest work for shit down here."

"Oh don't worry," Gavin said, the smirk still going strong. "There's no way in hell I'm turning over something this delicious. I have bigger plans, but I'll keep you posted. Just remember to keep your mouth shut about it. Now… what's the boss man want them for?"

"Oooh," Denice purred, voice gone honey sweet and shivery. "This is so good. The brother, you see, Dean… he's for Michael, the fucking archangel, you know. And Sam…" Gavin could practically hear her licking her lips. "Sam Winchester's for Lucifer, his one perfect meat suit. He's possessing somebody else right now, but it's bad meat, shriveling up already from what I hear."

Gavin closed his eyes. The night had never tasted sweeter. "I thought that might be it," he smiled. "I have to go now — I'm kneeling in public with a dead girl at my feet — but I'll call you when something happens."

"You better. If you try to pull this one over on me, you little fuckup," Denice hissed sweetly, "I got some delicate tidbits to spill if you catch my drift. They'd have you tied up six ways from Sunday with a chainsaw up your ass in no time."

"Oh, Denice," Gavin purred back. "You always did know how to charm." And with that he let the blood fall back onto the dead girl, severing the connection. Licking the residue from his palms and fingers, he stood up and headed back towards the lights of the main street at a quick walk. There was one more thing he wanted to get done tonight.

Once more under the warm glow of streetlamps, Gavin scanned up and down the street, searching. Like before, he glanced into the restaurant windows and down alleyways and side streets, but he wasn't looking for a victim this time. This time he wanted an accomplice of sorts, and when he spotted her, he knew beyond a doubt that she was perfect. Perfect, perfect, perfect. Tonight was just working out so well.

On the other side of the main street, a young woman was sitting next to a man, clearly her boyfriend, but neither of them looked particularly happy about it. He was trying to slip his hand under the hem of her shirt, a scowl on his face. She kept slapping him away and scooting a little further to the side, glaring. Perfect. Shaking his head at his luck, Gavin slipped across the street to get a closer look. She wasn't pretty — nose too long and crooked, too muscular, too flat-chested — but there was a certain alluring fire to her glare, and her hips could've brought the Virgin Mary to her knees. If she squeezed that ass into tighter clothes and really let herself go with the eye makeup and foundation, Gavin could feel that she would reek of sex… which is exactly what he wanted.

He stopped in front of the shadowed steps where the woman and her boyfriend sat. "Hey," he said, making it clear that he was talking to the girl and the girl alone.

She looked up, the glare still burning.

"Hey, asshole, why don't you fuck off," her boyfriend said, reaching to wrap his arm around her waist.

"Why don't _you_ fuck off," she spat at him, turning away from Gavin to slap her boyfriend's arm. "I'm not gonna ask again. Fuck off, or I'm screaming 'rape.'"

"Alexa, come on, baby," her boyfriend said, voice rough. "I didn't mean it."

She gave him a disgusted look. "You can't 'not mean' something like that. You did it. It's over. Now fuck off."

"Hey," Gavin said again. "I want to make you an offer."

"You fuck off, too," she spat at him. "I'm not sleeping with anybody. Not you," she glared at her boyfriend. "Not him," she pointed at Gavin. "Not fucking Leonardo DiCaprio! I am my own independent woman and I am finished with men!"

"I don't want to sleep with you," Gavin said, lips twisting up at the corners. This girl was going to nail it. "I want to make you a business offer," he continued. "It looks to me like you need money, and I need someone like you to help me get it. No sex. It has nothing to do with that."

"Screw you," the woman said. But she got distracted quickly because her boyfriend was trying to grab her again, and this time she didn't just slap his hands off; she stood up and swatted him full across the face. "It's over," she spat, and then she jumped off the steps and began to speed away down the street, hugging her coat tight around her shoulders.

Gavin spared a second to smirk at her boyfriend, who was gasping and holding his face in his hands, before he sped off after the girl. "Hold up," he called. "I'm serious about this offer. One night. Tomorrow. All you have to do is dress how I tell you to and say the things I want you to, and I can promise you at least four hundred dollars in cash." He caught up and began walking backwards to face her while he talked. "I know you're broke," he said more quietly, eyes gleaming as he caught her look away. "You've been living with that asshole back there and you have no money, no place to stay, no job, no family, no friends. What are you gonna do?" He paused to let that sink in for a moment. She hadn't told him to fuck off again, and that meant he had her attention, possibly more than that. With a deep breath he said, "I can help."

She stopped, glaring up at him with her sinewy arms crossed tight over her flat chest. "And what exactly is this getting you?"

"It's a hustling gig," he explained, tugging her to the side, out of the main walkway. She shook off his hand with another sharp glare, but willingly stepped to the side of her own accord. Gavin went on, "My friend is really good at pool. He's going to lose a bunch, drive the bets high, and then win to get the money back plus extra. It works without you, but with you… well, with you we can get those high bets a lot faster and higher."

"I'm bait," she said shortly.

"Yes," Gavin nodded, "but what's wrong with being bait if no one ever gets to bite? It's money. It's fast. No one gets hurt except a bunch of douchebags who are too stupid to see their being played." He licked his lips, eyes darting over her sharp, dark features. "What do you say?"

She hesitated for a second, peering back down the street to where her boyfriend had been sitting. He was gone now. She turned back and gave a curt nod. "You have a place for me to sleep?"

"We have a car," Gavin beamed. "You can have the passenger's seat."

She followed him back to the Honda, giving it a disapproving frown, but when she opened the door and saw Sam her eyes widened for a split second before quickly narrowing again. With her peripheral vision, she scanned him up and down, all six foot four two hundred twenty pounds of him.

"This your friend?" she asked Gavin sharply.

Gavin smirked as he slipped into the back. "Friend might've been a bit of an exaggeration, but yeah, that's the guy." He noticed her study of Sam's sleeping body and couldn't help himself from adding, "I thought you were done with guys. Not even fucking Leonardo DiCaprio, right?"

"I am done with guys," she spat, "which is why I'm not sure I like humongous Mr. Masculinity over there."

Gavin's smirk spread. "Then focus on the hair," he mumbled, snuggling down into the padded seat. "Dude's got really girly hair."

The woman snorted, but she didn't raise any further protests, just settled back and closed her eyes. Gavin breathed deeply and let it out with a self-satisfied sigh. Jumping back into the saddle was a lot easier than he'd thought it would be. Although his stomach was growling something fierce, and all he had to wear was the dirty, torn up pair of pajamas he'd left home in, tonight had been a hell of a good night by anybody's standards. He'd missed being a demon


	9. Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9:

Dean had called Bobby around midday to say that he was heading for Sioux Falls, but Bobby was having none of it.

"I'll meet you halfway," Bobby had said. The squeaks of his wheelchair as it ground into motion buzzed across the phone line.

"There's no need, Bobby," Dean had protested quickly. "I mean… It's no trouble, really. I'll be there late tomorrow."

"Don't be stupid," Bobby had growled, wheelchair still squeaking. "It'll do me good to stretch my legs."

"You're out of the chair?"

"No, you idjit! It's an expression!"

Anne smiled as Dean pulled the cell phone away from his ear with a grimace. She could hear the gruff voice coming through the scratchy phone speakers even over the noise of the road.

"You sure?" Dean put in once Bobby's yell had died down. "'Cause it really ain't a problem to wait a day."

"Shut up. I'm coming," Bobby grumbled. "Now, where should I meet you?"

…

Dean pulled the Impala onto a flat stretch of muddy earth above the banks of Hickory Creek. They were just outside Skidmore, Missouri, and it was late at night now, the thick branches of the overhanging trees hiding the sky from view. Looking up, Dean could only see it in little patches, but it was clear, a star sparking through the blue-black here and there, and with a little twinge in his stomach he remembered how he and Sam used to watch them together. But that was then. He shook his head with a frown and tore his gaze away from the heavens. Sam had always been a romantic son-of-a-bitch… of course he liked gooey stuff like looking at stars. Dean knew better. After all, what the hell was a star really but a dead ball of burning gas? Nothing even remotely romantic about that. Just a fucking eternity glaring back at you with beady eyes.

Dean wished he had a beer right then — or better yet: whiskey — but he'd forgotten to restock in the mess of the past few days, and now he was paying for it with a fat slab of sobriety.

Anne had been content to examine him through the windshield as he paced a little ways away from the car. Even though he was turned away, and even though it was dark, she could visualize the distant look in his eyes, the tightening of his jaw as he thought, as if she was standing in front of him in broad daylight. It was the girl, she nodded to herself, or something else very sad, and she was itching to write it down. But she couldn't. Too dark. Still, mental notes stopped for nothing! Trying to act casual, she slipped her stick-like body out of the car and leaned against the open door.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked.

"None of your business," Dean said, but there was no bite to his words. He stayed facing away, and Anne stayed facing towards him… watching.

"You know, Glen," she said after a moment, voice gone quiet. She wasn't sure she felt comfortable saying what she was about to say, but… well, she was going to do it anyway. She took a deep breath and closed the door behind her. "I know we don't know each other, but that's exactly why you don't have to… not talk." She gestured with her hands, never having been good at speaking. "After I get what I need for my book, we'll never see each other again, so what I think about you doesn't matter. You can… say things… about yourself… you know?" She looked up with large but cautious eyes at the shadowed profile of Dean's face. He was smiling stiffly.

"Sweetheart," he said in a rumble, still looking out rather than down at her. "I don't do all that feely crap. It's not me."

Anne shuffled a bit. "I got that," she said into the darkness, "but… I'm saying you don't have to be that way right now because… well… because we're strangers… so none of it matters really."

Dean was silent for a long time. Anne noticed his gaze beginning to drift back up towards the lattice work of the tree limbs and the dark blue, star-studded sky beyond. His eyes stayed there for a while longer, and they didn't lower when at last he said, "So you wanna know the real story, huh?"

Anne couldn't prevent the excited little inhale that hopped down into her lungs, but she forced her voice to remain calm as she said, "I do. Yes."

With his gaze still locked to the glistening blanket of the heavens, Dean hummed softly. Then, not even seeming to move his mouth, he began to speak. "The hairs you found don't belong to a girl," he said in a quiet, almost detached, and very slow voice. "They belong to my brother." He paused for a moment, blinking at the stars, before adding with a shrug, "We travelled together… to hell and back again." A dry twitch of his lips indicated some hidden joke. "But it turns out he wasn't the guy I thought he was, and he ditched me… again. And so now I've got a world of shit that I have to sort through on my own." There was another long moment here before he turned towards Anne with a smirk on his face that he didn't mean. "That, sweetheart, is the sob story you've been digging for. Does it meet your expectations?"

Anne stood still, licking her lips silently. She knew there wasn't really any good answer to his question, so instead she asked, "What was his name?"

"My brother? He's still alive, honey… far's I know."

"Sorry. What _is_ his name?"

Dean reached up to scratch the stubble that was beginning to grow out on his chin. "Sam," he said, still scratching as if all this was meaningless to him. "A real bitch, too."

"He was younger?"

"Yeah. Four years."

"And you don't have any other siblings?"

"Look, lady," he said, frowning at her, "just because I gave you a little doesn't mean I'm down for a full on interrogation." However, with a tip of his head he relented, "But no. It was just me and Sammy."

"See," Anne said quietly. "Now you're using the past tense, too."

Luckily for Dean, Bobby chose this moment to growl into the muddy clearing in his big white truck (although given that it was Bobby's it didn't really look white anymore and hadn't for quite a few years). Both Dean and Anne straightened as the engine roared closer and then spat to a stop. The night went silent again until a rough voice growled, "Well are you gonna come over here or what?"

"Oh, right," Dean grinned. "Forgot you were a gimp."

"Shuddup," Bobby frowned amicably. But as Dean strode up to the driver's side and opened the door, the frown deepened to one of concern. Bobby surveyed his face, wrinkles multiplying, and then pronounced, "You look like someone shot your puppy."

Dean's smile faded. "It ran away," he stated shortly, "but I'm not cryin' over spilt milk."

Bobby continued to stare with calculating eyes. His expression was hard to read. "It'll be back," he said.

Dean, never having been comfortable with metaphorical conversations and having had enough Sam talk in the past twelve hours to last a month, let his mouth twitch once to acknowledge Bobby's statement before steering the conversation onto safer ground. "How'd you manage to drive here anyway? I thought your legs were completely shot out?"

The older man gave him a look that promised more serious talk in the future, but he momentarily allowed Dean to redirect the discussion. "Ski poles," he said, lifting his arms to display the poles hooked to his wrists. "One for the gas. One for the break. It's a lot easier than I thought, actually."

"That's dangerous." It was Anne who'd spoken. She'd tiptoed over to stand several paces behind Dean and was now eyeing Bobby with her intense baby blues as if he was a fascinating new species of beetle.

Bobby raised a scruffy eyebrow and glanced between her and Dean. "Didn't know you had company," he muttered.

Dean rolled his eyes. "Bobby, Anne," he said with a careless wave of his hand. "Anne, Bobby. We good now?"

"Hello," Bobby said to Anne. He tipped up the brim of his baseball cap in greeting.

Anne nodded in return, eyes still fixed and unblinking. Bobby squirmed a bit in his seat; he felt like a bacterium in a petri dish that had just been put under the microscope, and he didn't think he liked it.

To ease his discomfort, Bobby began to speak again, "So…" he said, clearing his throat and nodding between Dean and Anne. "What's the story here?"

"No story," Dean said shortly. "She wants to write a book about me. She's tagging along for a bit. That's all."

Bobby's mouth twitched. "What? One book not enough for you?"

"Shut up," Dean commanded. "I'm an unwilling participant."

"Mmhmm," Bobby nodded, the corners of his mouth still curled up. "Whatever you say."

Dean coughed uncomfortably. "This isn't what I called you for. We've got a lot of serious crap going down and we need to talk about it."

Both Bobby's eyebrows arched this time. "In front of the girl?" He tipped his hat towards Anne again with an added, "No offense or anything."

Dean shrugged. "Why not? Not like anyone's gonna believe her." He halfway turned to look at Anne with a smirk. "Ain't that right, sweetheart?"

Anne had no idea what they were talking about, so she just remained silently waiting in the background, enormous eyes flicking from one man to the other. For the first time, she began to wonder if this had been such a good idea. She was essentially out in the middle of nowhere with two roughed-up men who seemed to have a lot of problems, and neither of them appeared to really want her around. But then again, the plot was thickening under her very nose, and if there was one smell on earth Anne had never been able to resist, it was that of a thickening plot. So she stayed where she was, and, with a heartbeat like a rabbit's, she listened.

"Okay," Bobby shrugged, voice turning up in that way that plainly said he still thought it was a bad idea but would go along with whatever Dean wanted. "I don't know about you, but I've got big news. 't's why I came out here 'stead o' waiting for you to come to me. You're not gonna like it though."

"When do I ever?"

"No, I mean, you're _really_ not gonna like it. 't's about Sam."

Dean groaned. "Tell me you brought beer," he said, rubbing his eyes.

Bobby snorted. "Who do you think I am? Of course I have beer! But let me get this out first. It's important."

"Fine, so stop toeing around it and just say it!"

"Well okay then, Moody Suzy," Bobby said, frowning at Dean, but not like he was really angry. "It was yesterday evening when I heard it. Rufus caught a demon outside Santa Fe, and he was just questioning it about a few routine things when it mentioned Sam, so of course he got interested, kicked up the pain an' suffering a notch or two, and it told him something that he didn't quite believe. Assuming it was a lying son-of-a-bitch, he put it down, but he called me up anyhow and passed along what little Miss Chatty Cathy said."

"And what'd she say?" Dean pushed.

"Said you weren't the only Winchester who was some big important vessel. According to her, Sam is too, but… you know… for the other side."

Dean's eyebrows shot together. "What? Lucifer?" He shook his head. "No. He already has a vessel."

But Bobby was shaking his head, too. "Just a stand in, the demon said. Gotta have Sam before the title fight goes down."

Dean rubbed his mouth angrily. "And you think this intel's good?" he said, voice sharp and critical. "Coming second hand from Rufus?"

"Boy, I trust Rufus like my own brother."

Dean laughed wryly. "Yeah, and we all know how trustworthy those are."

Bobby drew himself up, sucking air into his chest. "'t's not Sam's fault he's a vessel," he said, eyeing Dean darkly.

"I'm not blaming him for being a vessel," Dean stated, voice just as dark as Bobby's. "I'm blaming him for everything else."

Anne was watching this whole exchange with horrified fascination. They were insane! They were both completely insane… Or else this was some type of secret code… but it didn't really sound like code. Anyway, Anne didn't much care either way. Psycho or not, Glen had never been more interesting.

Both Bobby and Dean ignored her as they continued their heated conversation.

"I've had about enough of your whining," Bobby growled at the younger man. "Sure Sam has some serious crap to answer for, but so do you. Hell, so do I! So does every damn hunter that ever walked this godforsaken planet! So stop bitching about how much pain he's caused you and get your ass out there to find him. If Lucifer needs him, then the last thing we want is Sam off alone somewhere hopped up on demon blood, right?" Bobby fumed, waiting for Dean to respond. "Right?"

Dean glared at him fiercely. "I shouldn't have to be my brother's keeper."

"Well tough luck, 'cause you are." His voice was harsh, but his wrinkled face softened a little as he looked down at Dean's crossed arms. "You're not alone, though," he said, leaning towards Dean across the driver's seat. "You know that, right? You got me. You got Cas. If you need it, you got Rufus, too. And Ellen, and Jo. Hell, it's the damn apocalypse! Any hunter with enough sense to hit a nail's gonna help you if you ask for it."

The anger seeped out of Dean's tight features, leaving just exhaustion. "But I can't ask," he said. He leaned against the side of Bobby's truck and wiped his hand over his face. "They'll want to kill him. They won't understand, and… I mean, maybe they're right. Maybe that's really all there is for it. Christ, you know Sam's let us down enough times… But I can't do that. I can't let him die."

Bobby watched him, features for once showing his full age as they welled with a sadness to match Dean's. "I don't know, kid," he said. "I don't know what we're gonna have to do when it comes down to it. But I know the first step, and that's finding Sam."

"Shouldn't be too hard," Dean muttered. "I'm almost positive he's sucking blood again, and that means he's gonna be dropping demons. All we gotta do is pick up the body trail."

But, despite his words, Dean's brain hadn't fully settled in on the tracking task ahead of him, yet. Instead, his thoughts kept tipping back up towards the stars, where they rested for long after everyone had fallen silent, and all he could think was, _Oh, Sammy… why? Why couldn't you just have left things the way they were?_

The stars had no response. Of course they didn't… because what the hell was a star really but a dead ball of burning gas?


	10. Chapter 10

**Hey. I'm so sorry that it took me this long to get this chapter up and that it's so short. I promise the next chapter will be longer and (hopefully) won't take me a week to post. Again, sorry; I just have a lot less time now that school's back in session, but hopefully I will soon establish a more regular writing schedule. That's all. Thanks to everyone who's reading this story. You guys are the best.**

* * *

CHAPTER 10:

The dark silence that had settled over the muddy clearing was broken by the sharp ringing of a phone. Dean and Bobby snapped to attention, and then, realizing what it was, gave each other questioning looks. For a split second, each wondered if, over all the years they'd known each other, they'd somehow managed to miss a key element of the other's personality… because the ringtone that was now spilling its peppy tones out into the hissing night was… well… not exactly a hunter type song.

_All the single ladies!_

_All the single ladies!_

_All the single ladies!_

_All the single ladies!_

_Now put your hands up—_

"That's mine," Anne gasped, breaking the awkward tension. She made a gawky dash for the car and scrabbled with the door handle. Managing to tear it open at last, she fumbled for the phone and secured it shakily in the bony grasp of her fingers.

"Hello?" she breathed.

Bobby and Dean looked away from each other with pinkening cheeks, embarrassed that they'd doubted the other's manliness, even for just a moment.

Anne was oblivious, staring off into space as she listened to the other end of the line.

"Anne," the voice announced without emotion, "This is Nigel."

She swallowed. "Oh, hi, Nigel." Nigel was Anne's older brother.

"Hi," Nigel repeated, voice dry. His tone made it very clear that he didn't want to talk. Anne suspected that he just had some quick info to pass on, and then he'd be out. He proved her right as he continued, "I was wondering if you could drop in on Mom and Dad this weekend. I've been planning this trip with Sydney for a while and we finally got the reservations so…" He trailed off, as always, saying as little as possible to convey the point.

Anne grimaced, though only the darkness could see. "Nigel," she said. "Look, I'm really sorry, but I can't. I'm not really in town… Do you think you could call Anya?" Anya was their younger sister.

"Already did," Nigel stated flatly. "She can't. I can't. That leaves you."

Anne hunched over; guilt bit deep into her gut. "I can't either," she mumbled. "I think I've finally got a break on my book, and I'm travelling with other people. I can't force them to drive me back to Tennessee; it would take a whole day."

There was silence on the other end of the line.

Timidly, Anne suggested, "Couldn't we just not visit them this weekend? They do fine all week without help."

"Whatever," Nigel said, and he hung up, leaving Anne with two fingers pressed to the bridge of her nose and her upper body slumped against the Impala's door. The accusation in her brother's voice stung like cold air on an open wound. God… the things guilt could do to your stomach.

However, her moment of self-hatred was interrupted by another ringing phone. Everybody looked up again, but it wasn't Anne's this time. The call was for Dean. He headed over to retrieve the phone from the car with much greater poise than Anne had, steps even, not rushing. Still, he closed his eyes when he picked it up, unsure how he'd feel if the caller ID said…

…but it didn't. The knot in Dean's throat untied at the same time that a new one formed lower down. It was Chuck.

"Dean? Dean?" came the squeaky voice. "Is that you?"

"Yeah, Chuck, it's me." Dean pinched his nose, a perfect copy of Anne's gesture. "What's going on?"

"Is… is Sam with you?"

"No."

There was a second of silence. "Oh."

"Chuck," Dean growled. "Whatever it is, spit it out. Have you seen something?"

"Um… well, it's about Sam."

"Everything is," Dean muttered.

"What?" the prophet said nervously.

"Nothing. You were saying?"

"Well… I just… I called because I wasn't sure if you knew that Sam's, you know, back at his, um… old habits."

"I guessed. He ditched me again, which I suppose you already knew, and I figured it out from there." As he stood in the night, pacing back and forth over muddy ground, something occurred to Dean, and he stopped. He looked up, staring straight at Bobby. "Hey," he said into the phone mic, the bitterness dropping out of his voice. "You know where he is?"

"Um… yeah. Yeah, I do."

Dean waited. When nothing more came, he rolled his eyes and said, "And?"

Hesitantly, Chuck said. "I'm not sure I should tell you. I mean, you might try to interfere with the prophecy again, and I… well, I really don't want to deal with Raphael after… um… well, after what he did to Castiel and my house and—"

"Chuck!" Dean interrupted, voice harsh. "I know where you live! Remember? So, unless you want me to send a letter bomb in the mail, how 'bout you tell me what you know."

Dean could hear Chuck swallow. His voice was quiet and even more strained than usual when he finally said, "Angels Camp, California. I don't know anything more specific than that."

Dean breathed in with closed eyes. "Thanks, Chuck," he said. "You're a lifesaver."

"So…" the prophet coughed, "no letter bomb?"

"No. Hell, I might even send you some scented stationary!"

"Oh… Wow," Chuck mumbled awkwardly. "Thanks, Dean. Well, that was all. I guess I'll…"

"Yeah, bye, Chuck."

"Bye."

Dean hung up. His eyes immediately snapped up to Bobby's, filled with a renewed fire. "Angels Camp, California," he said. "Chuck says Sam's there."

"Well," Bobby shrugged. "That was easier than I thought."

Dean tromped back over towards the driver's-side door. "We've gotta hurry," he said. "No telling how long Sam's planning on staying in town."

"Wait a minute," Anne said. She pushed herself off of the car frame to stand up straight, determined to force out a few answers before anything else too crazy happened. "What's going on with…" She waved her arms about. "… all this? Who are you guys?"

Dean slapped his hand against the Impala's roof in impatience. Every second wasted was a second that Sam could be moving away. "I'm a hunter," he said shortly.

Bobby gave him the stink eye. "So am I," he interjected in a grumpy voice.

Dean rolled his eyes but nodded. "Yeah, him too. We're hunters. We kill monsters." He glanced over his shoulder at the older man with a frown and grumbled, "That's what we used to do anyway. Now there's this whole big picture plan going on with angels and demons and Lucifer… whole lotta dicks basically, coming down here and fucking with our planet. My brother and I—"

"Jesus, what am I? Chopped liver?"

"—and Bobby," Dean acknowledged with another eye roll, "are pretty thick in the middle of it. I'm a vessel. Sam's a vessel. Bobby's…" Dean made a face. "…Bobby. Essentially we have a lotta big problems. Apocalypse. End of times." Dean gestured with his hands, losing patience with even his own explanation. "General shit. You know?"

Anne had been surveying him this whole time as if she were some sort of computing mechanism, a scanner perhaps. Her head nodded up and down in long, slow sweeps, taking everything in, and Dean got the skin-crawly feeling that she was diagnosing him. Psycho therapist bitch.

Irritated and unnerved by the silent stare, he demanded, "So you want me to drop you off somewhere?"

Anne turned her head from one side to the other in a single understated shake. Against her will, a little smile was pulling at her lips. "Are you kidding?" she said. "Things are just starting to heat up."

Bobby snorted.

Dean's mouth stretched without humor. "Sweetheart," he said, "Trust me. You'll get tired of the heat faster than a pig in a skirt. Pretty soon you're gonna wish you were in the damn Arctic!"

Anne, regarding Dean through bulging eyes, shrugged. Her limbs were quivering with the tiny quick flicks of aspen leaves in a breeze, but she couldn't tell if that was from fear or excitement. Either way, an author never backed down from a promising lead… and this lead was promising things the likes of which she had never seen before. No way could she give up and just go home!

Realizing that she had to vocalize these thoughts, she forced herself to say, "I'm staying," and then with a dry swallow, "Lead on…"

Dean shrugged. "Then California, here we come," he growled.


	11. Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11:

Sam woke up feeling gross… not just surface gross, but really crap-level disgusting. He hadn't taken a shower or changed clothes in roughly two days, and after hiking across a mucky wilderness, lying in a fish-smelling truck bed, and sleeping in a stranger's car, the grime was catching up to him. Then again, it was also the first time in two days he'd gotten a good night's sleep, so in spite of the dirt he was actually feeling pretty good when he unstuck his eyelids…

…until he turned and saw a woman stretched out in the passenger's seat.

Sam's body, already stiff from the awkward sleeping position, went rigid. With his eyes remaining fixed on the intruder to make sure she didn't move, he began to reach for the knife tucked into his jacket. Before he could pull it out, however, he was interrupted by a yawned: "I see you've noticed our new friend."

Sam's head whipped around. He winced as his neck cricked.

"Gavin," he growled, reaching up to rub the sore spot. "You did this?"

"Did this?" Gavin repeated indignantly. He'd already been awake and sitting up, and now he crossed his arms over his chest. "Dude, _this_—" He nodded towards the sleeping woman. "—is an essential step in my ingenious plan, which I kindly set up for us last night while you were busy dreaming about unicorns and sugar plum fairies."

"I don't dream about—" Sam scowled as he realized the more important aspect of Gavin's statement. "Wait, you left last night?"

"I came back," Gavin pointed out, face scrunched in a way that made it clear he wanted to move on. "Now do you want to wake her up so we can talk strategy, or do you like watching her sleep as much as she liked watching you?"

"What?" It was too early for this. Sam's brain felt more like pouting and glaring than anything else — it certainly wasn't up for sifting through all the crap Gavin was throwing at it — and Sam felt sure that Gavin knew this and was toying with him on purpose. Stupid demons.

Confirming Sam's suspicions, Gavin shook his head with the outlines of a smirk. "Nothing," he said. "Just wake the girl up."

With a last glare for the demon, Sam turned towards his new human companion. In the time it took his hand to travel from its resting position by his side up to her shoulder, he performed a quick scan… kind of short, at least partially Latina, nothing close to drop-dead-gorgeous but not unattractive either. Dressed in baggy sweatpants and a studded jean jacket, she probably wasn't the type of girl who liked to be messed with, and so, even though he was a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier, Sam found the woman a little intimidating. He hesitated before letting his palm fall the final two inches to tap her upper arm.

Before she'd even opened her eyes, she swatted him away — it had become a subconscious gesture after so long with her boyfriend — but she didn't apologize when she looked up and realized that, for once, Mr. Asshole wasn't the guilty party. Instead she said, "Oh, it's you."

Sam pulled his hand back quickly. "Hi," he said.

Gavin snorted and clapped one hand down on either seat back. "Dude," he smirked, "she's not gonna bite your fingers off."

"Touch me and I will," the girl snapped back. She slapped Gavin with her fire-eyed glare and then swept it over to Sam. "I'm here for the gig and then I'm out. No fucking around."

Sam's eyes widened, more in surprise than anything else, and it took him a moment to work up a response. When he did speak, all that came out was: "Okay." Mentally kicking himself, he wondered how it was he'd ever gotten into Stanford. Had he been smarter back then? 'Cause right now he sure felt like a fucking idiot. Cursing the sluggish morning pace of his mental cogs, and cursing Gavin for putting him in a position that required thinking so early, he narrowed his eyes back at the demon. "Do you mind explaining what's going on?" he asked sourly.

"Sure, dude." Gavin was smiling like a cat with a mouse's tail pinned under its paw. Sadistic pleasure… so sour… so sweet. His lips curled further. "Alexa, this is Sam. Sam, this is Alexa." He motioned between the two with one lazy hand before returning it to its resting place on the back of Sam's seat. "And I'm Gavin. I've brought us all together on this fine morning for the culmination of my glorious and long-anticipated plan to earn a couple grand… which," he added, shooting a quick glance at Sam, "we could just as easily steal."

"No stealing," Sam said flatly.

Gavin held up his hands. "Exactly why we're here."

Alexa was looking between them with slanted brows. The hard set of her mouth said plainly that she wasn't interested in conversational foreplay. She wanted the rundown of the hard facts, and she wanted it now.

"Alexa here," Gavin continued, "is the third piece in our hustling set up, and this is how it's going to work. Sam, we're going to dress you up like a total prick if we can: nice little sweater, khaki pants… the stereotypical rich kid look. Alexa will be your very cool, not-super-interested lady friend." He turned to Alexa to clarify, "You're not going to be a prick. Sam, as we all know, is the douchebag here."

Sam rolled his eyes and smacked off the hand that had reached up to pat his shoulder. Gavin pulled back quickly, smirking. "Then," he went on, "Sam is going to pretend to get totally smashed. This whole time you need to be acting more and more obnoxious," he told Sam. "You want them to really dislike you. Alexa, you on the other hand are our dude-magnet. Act like Sam's getting on your nerves, and, when we catch ourselves a pool opponent, come on strong. We're selling that if they keep winning the games, they'll win you, too… because, I mean, money and sex, right? We're hawking the two most basic human vices here."

"So," Sam cut in, "it's fundamentally the same as the initial plan but with a bit of window-dressing?"

Gavin's dark lips folded into a pout. "A plan without window-dressing," he proclaimed, "is like a cake without icing… It's too dry to eat."

"It worked fine in the past," Sam muttered.

"Well, we're making a better cake now."

"And it's just the one bar?" It was Alexa who'd spoken, causing both Gavin and Sam to spin about in surprise. Neither had expected her to break her moody silence until it became absolutely and inescapably necessary. Her voice, Sam noticed, was low for a woman's, and kind of gruff. Much as he hated to admit it, Gavin had known what he was doing when he picked her up. Physically attractive or not, polite or not, Sam couldn't deny that there was something deeply sexy about the girl. In her voice, the way she moved, the way she glared… it was impossible to avoid mentally undressing her. Embarrassed by this image, Sam glanced away with a blush.

"No," Gavin said. The way his eyes slipped down from her face made it clear that Sam wasn't the only one picturing her naked. "We're probably not gonna be able to get the bets over a couple hundred, so we'll have to hit a few establishments tonight if we want to make it worth our while." He refocused on her face with an unapologetic twist of his lips. "I was thinking we'd head up highway 4 to Vallecito and then on to Murphys. Depending on what type of time we make, we might even get into the park."

"The park?" Sam said, trying to shake the pinkness out of his cheeks.

He'd been asking Gavin, but Alexa was the one who answered. "Big Trees. Part of Stanislaus National Forest," she said, eyes hard. "You're not a California boy, are you?" Although she said it like a question, she obviously already knew the answer, and it made Sam twitch a bit in his seat. He was supposed to be in charge of this little group, but here he was with two people (or one person and one demon technically) who both had a much better grasp of the state's geography than he did, which meant they had a much clearer idea of where they were actually going. It made Sam feel like he was losing control, and he didn't like it one little bit.

"No. Um… Kansas," he admitted.

"Dude, that sucks," Gavin said, nose scrunching in honest sympathy.

Sam looked away out the windshield as he grumbled, "It's not so bad."

Gavin smirked. Even Alexa's lips twitched as she watched the big man sink into a pout like a six-year-old child. Clearly, his home-state pride had been wounded.

Gavin longed to goad Sam further about the sad fate it was to be born in Kansas, but he put it aside as a source of later entertainment; they had bigger fish to fry right now. Like, was he ever going to get out of these stupid pajamas? For fuck's sake, he didn't even have shoes! And, God, could he use a shower!

As it turned out, this wasn't as much of a problem as he'd anticipated. When he brought it up, Alexa's black-eyed glare took on a glint that could only be described as evil. She didn't smile exactly, but one side of her upper lip twitched as if she were devouring a very sweet piece of candy. A little bit of sugar dripped into her gruff voice as she said, "I still got the key to that asshole's house, and I have to go pick up my stuff anyhow. I say screw it, let's pick up some of his other shit, too."

Gavin liked this plan.

Sam didn't. Stealing, he pointed out. The whole idea behind the hustling was that they weren't going to steal.

"Hey," Alexa said. "That's my shit, too. My fucking money helped buy his clothes and his soap and pay his fucking mortgage, so I'm entitled to go get my bit back. Yeah?"

Sam still didn't like it, but, between arguing with Alexa and giving in to questionable morals, he would happily take the path to hell… Less frightening. So he put the car into drive and listened to the girl's snapped instructions as she steered them towards her boyfriend's — sorry: _ex_-boyfriend's — house. It was a sad affair, almost more like a sleeping RV, now welded to the earth, than an actual home. Trash was strewn here and there in the tall brown grasses that fenced it in, and it smelled like the septic tank was leaking.

Well, shit. Motel rooms sure as hell beat this piece of crap.

Once Alexa was out of the car and couldn't see, Gavin made a face at Sam. "Dude," he said. "We might have to keep her on. I mean, I may be a demon, but even my feebly fluttering conscience says we can't dump her back here."

"Yeah," Sam said as he leaned forward to squint at the slouching shack through the windshield. "You might have a point." He swept his eyes over the whole sad lot once more, and then asked, "You think we should follow her?"

When Gavin didn't respond, he glanced back, only to find that the demon had already gotten out and begun picking through the trash towards the house. Sam rolled his eyes, slipped off the seat, and slammed the door behind him. Stupid demons!

Inside, it turned out, was a bit nicer. There was a slightly chemically Febreze scent, which wasn't great, but it beat the septic tank by a longshot. The walls had peeling patterned wallpaper, taped-up notes, and photos. A few candles perched on top of various shelves and cabinets, and the morning light sparkled softly through the windows.

Sam followed Gavin (who was following Alexa) at a slight stoop. The roof hung low here, and, in the cramped space, he had the nerve-racking feeling that he was going to knock something over at any second. Small steps, arms tucked tight into his jacket, he moved from the first room to the second. Aside from the bathroom, this turned out to be the only other room in the house — a bedroom — one thick mattress in the corner and two chests of drawers against the opposite wall. Alexa spared it only a brief glance, eyes flicking from drawers to floorboards to mattress without emotion as if all her ties to the place had already been severed. Then she pointed towards the bathroom.

"You two should shower first," she said, mouth never shifting from its hard line. "I'll pull the clothes together. What exactly d'ya want for the gig?"

"Sam, you shower," Gavin commanded. He glanced over his thin shoulder with a smirk. "You smell the worst." Turning back to Alexa, he said, "I'll help pick out the outfits; it's my plan after all." And then, as if realizing something, he cocked his head at her. "I take it we're stealing your ex's clothes for me and Sam?"

Alexa nodded shortly.

"Sweet," Gavin grinned. Without hesitation, he bent over the closest set of drawers and began tugging them open one by one.

Sam felt a slightly guilty twinge pinch his stomach. Whatever Alexa said, it was still stealing… At least he didn't have to watch. Instead, he slipped around the edge of the room towards the tiny bathroom that Alexa had indicated. Showering sounded beyond amazing right now, and he was going to focus on that instead of their crime, so, as soon as the door was firmly shut behind him, he began to strip without hesitation. The two-day-old clothes smelled almost as bad as the leaking septic tank, which was saying something, and just being out of them made him feel about five times cleaner. The water sputtered and hissed for the first few seconds when he turned it on as if it knew he was trespassing, and in continuing protest refused to heat up all the way, but Sam didn't mind much. He made a face at the metal showerhead (which glared back through the rapidly building condensation), got in, and scrubbed like there was no tomorrow. It was only after he'd gotten out and dried off that he realized he didn't have any clothes. Correction: he had clothes; he didn't have any clothes that he was willing to put on, which in the end amounted to the same thing.

"Gavin," Sam called through the thin, condensation-streaked wood of the door. "D'you have the outfit together yet? 'Cause I kind of need something to wear."

"Chill, dude," the demon's voice vibrated from the other room. "Almost there." Understandably, Sam assumed this was all Gavin was going to say… but he was wrong. There was an evil grin pervading the demon's tone as he added, "So Sam, tell me… are you a boxer or briefs guy?" And then, on a stroke of inspiration, "No wait! I know. Man out on the fringes like you? I bet you just say fuck all and go commando, right?"

Already flushed from the water, Sam's cheeks dipped to an even deeper pink. "Fuck you," he growled, but he couldn't do anything more because he was stuck in the bathroom. He just had to stand there with his dripping hair and damp towel and wait in mortification for Gavin to bring him whatever shitty-ass clothes he was going to bring him.


	12. Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12:

"I look like a prick."

"You're supposed to look like a prick. Rejoice. Mission accomplished."

Sam didn't rejoice. He glared at Gavin's reflection in the mirror and then back at his own, which strongly resembled a Ken doll whose clothes had shrunk in the wash.

Alexa swung up behind them with pursed lips. She stopped and crossed her arms at their three gray-toned copies in the glass. "You look like a Ken doll," she said, confirming Sam's suspicions. Her voice stayed toneless, but it seemed to Sam that there was amusement trapped in the tight crinkles where her lips pressed together. He, however, was not amused. No one had ever looked like a bigger tool. Yeah, the mission was accomplished, but the mission sucked.

Gavin grinned. "Dude," he said and slapped Sam's sweater-clad shoulder, "This is gonna be the biggest fucking success since the invention of the toaster."

Sam continued to glower, though he thought that Gavin was probably right. Okay… not exactly right — they weren't going to churn up anywhere close to the amount of dough the toaster had — but the demon's additions to Dean's old scam were undoubtedly set to make it rain. That is, if Sam could still get the shots off in a sweater this tight.

Alexa looked like a fucking sex goddess. Under the disapproving brand of her black-eyed glare, Gavin had pulled out clothes with the certainty of a professional wardrobe consultant. His dark hands had worked rapidly, expression tight and focused as he dismissed item after item, and then tossed out a pair of jeans and black tank without even glancing up. "Put those on," he'd commanded.

Alexa didn't like orders, and she snatched up the clothes with a distinctly unfriendly expression, but this only made Gavin smile. "_Please_ put those on," he'd corrected.

When she whisked out of the bathroom, Gavin nodded approvingly, gaze trailing up and down her body in long slow sweeps. Sam glanced briefly and then stared through her at the wall.

"That's good," he said.

Gavin snorted. "It's better than good, Dude. Go heavier on the makeup and we've got ourselves perfection."

In spite of Alexa's statue-like expression, Sam thought he detected a slight blush sneak up through her tan. "That happens right before we go," she growled. "Otherwise it'll get all screwed up by the time we hit the bars."

Sam nodded. "Great," he said, eager to move on to something that wouldn't require so much determined _not_-looking at Alexa's hips. "So… what do we do 'til then?"

"Oooh, can we eat?" Gavin said. His black eyes lost their demonic glitter and grew wide like a child's as he glanced between Sam and Alexa. "Is there food?"

Sam was about to scowl and point out that Gavin didn't need to eat, when he realized that this might not be the brightest idea. His face scrunched as it hit him that he had no clue whether or not Alexa was in the know. Had Gavin told her everything? Nothing? Was she a hunter? Shit, for all Sam knew, she could be another fucking hell bitch! Or ghoul. Or anything really. He hadn't performed any of the tests.

"Yeah," Alexa responded, the fire returning to her eyes. "You." A stabbing finger jerked up at Sam in a threatening point. "Scramble eggs. I'll get plates. And Shorty—" by which she meant Gavin "—You make the toast. Stuff yourselves. I want this asshole to go hungry."

Sam and Gavin, who hadn't eaten in at least a day, were happy to oblige, although the food mixed with the pooled guilt in Sam's stomach in a slightly unsettling fashion. Still, he couldn't ignore the amazing crunch of the crisped bread or the intoxicating salty steam coming off the eggs. He stabbed a heavy forkful and let the flavors seep into his tongue. It wasn't like he'd never done stuff like this before after all. Credit card fraud. Squatting… Not all that different really, was it? They were using other people's crap to accomplish their own goals. Same thing, right?

Wasn't it?

…was it?

As he swallowed, Sam felt the ball of food pushing out uncomfortably on the inside of his throat. He'd never had to decide this type of thing on his own before. Dean had always been there before, and when Sam worried they'd gone too far, Dean had called him stupid and sentimental and put his conscience to rest. When it was the other way around, Dean had been there to pull (or more often punch) Sam back into line. Much as he hated to admit it, his older brother had been his moral compass, and without him, Sam could feel the needle spinning. Spinning, spinning, spinning. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know what was right. He needed—

No, he didn't! Sam stabbed his fork back into the damp yellow mass on his plate. He did _not_ need Dean to be there telling him what he could and couldn't do like Sam didn't have his own brain. He could work this out on his own. He _would_ work this out on his own! Hadn't that been one of the reasons he'd left anyway? Because Dean wouldn't stop treating him like a five-year-old in a porcelain shop? Because Dean wouldn't trust him? He did _not_ need a fucking chaperone!

"Little bit worked up there, Dude?" Gavin broke in. "They're just eggs, you know, not essence of snot. You're supposed to eat them."

Sam froze with his fork poised over the protein goop, ready to lance back in. He looked up and realized that Gavin and Alexa were both watching him, eyebrows tilted skeptically.

Sam blushed. "Sorry," he said, lowering his utensil to a less aggressive position. "I, um… Troubling thoughts." He waved his hand dismissively. "You know."

Gavin snorted. Although Alexa kept her mouth shut, the quick pop and drop of her eyebrows sent a similar message. Sam's blush darkened and he slouched deeper into his seat, pointedly avoiding their eyes. He scooped up a very civilized-sized bite and chewed with a careful lack of haste. He even went so far as to release the fork and rest it against the side of the plate as he ate… just so no one could possibly worry about him using it in a violent manner. This drew another snort from the demon. Alexa turned away, hand jumping off the table to hide the involuntary spread of her lips.

"Dude," Gavin said as his mouth parted in a light sneer. "You are way too self-conscious. It's like watching a high school girl."

"Shut up," Sam mumbled. "Don't be a bitch."

"Oh, I'm not the bitch," Gavin smirked, but the smirk quickly gave way to a smaller and less mocking smile as his eyes widened and sparked. "Which reminds me. We need to make sure you can pull off a convincing rich-college-kid act. None of that gruff hunter crap. You know what I'm talking about? I mean, you've at least met a few college students, right?

Sam rolled his eyes, offended despite himself. "I _was_ a college student."

"Wait, seriously?" Gavin leaned back in his chair.

Alexa, too, was regarding Sam with evident surprise, leaning towards disbelief.

"Dude." The demon shook his head. "That is ten kinds of crazy."

"Why? You thought I was a high school dropout or something?"

Gavin shrugged. "Yeah."

Sam frowned. Stupid demons. "Well, I'm not," he scowled, forking up the final mouthful of eggs and pushing back from the table. "I didn't graduate from college because my brother showed up and dragged me off first, but I went to Stanford for nearly four years."

"What'd you study?" It was Alexa this time, though from her expression, Sam was pretty sure she was asking more to humor him than anything else. She didn't believe he'd really gone to Stanford. Guys who went to Stanford (if not _the_ most selective university in the country, then definitely in the top three) were not the same guys who slept in crap cars and hustled pool. They were out curing cancer, inventing computer thingies, and saving the fucking planet… not screwing the pooch up and down the foothills.

"Prelaw," Sam admitted.

"Huh," Gavin said. He gave Sam an appraising look and then concluded, "You'd have to lose the hair."

Sam flipped him off.

Alexa laughed.

Gavin smirked.

For the rest of the day, they played poker, and only when the light slipping in through the windows had been almost completely blacked out did they move. Alexa headed to the bathroom to do her makeup and grab her bags. Gavin returned to the bedroom to snag a few extra clothes, and Sam slipped out into the deepening night to get the car started. Gavin didn't take long. Sam had only been waiting for a minute when the demon popped the car door open and lounged out across the backseat.

Sam shot Gavin an irritated frown. "Where's Alexa?"

Gavin shrugged. "Still inside. I hope she's quick, though; it smells like shit out here."

It did. The wind hadn't picked up during the day, and the septic stink was richer than ever, burning through the shadows to barrage their nostrils. Luckily, it was only about half a minute before the door of the house swung open and Alexa appeared. She was temporarily framed by the electric fire of the lights behind her before she slammed the creaky metal screen and outer wooden slab shut and the world went dark again.

She smacked down against the passenger's seat and stared out the window at the dilapidated shack. It looked fairly pathetic in the ghostly moonlight — small and pouty — like Alexa was breaking up with it and not its owner. In the darkness, Sam couldn't see the girl's eyes, but for once he thought the hard edge of her stare had softened as she said, "Adios pendejo," the insult spoken almost as a term of endearment.

Sam shifted behind the wheel, unsure if Alexa was done with her goodbyes or not. Could he start driving? Or should he wait?

Alexa answered this question with a rough, "We gonna go?" And Sam wasted no time arguing. They headed back towards town, and only Alexa looked back — just once — to find that the house had already been swallowed by trees and darkness.

* * *

**Hia. Apologies for the lack of action, but I promise the next chapter will have more large-ish happenings.**


	13. Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13:

The air in the bar wasn't much warmer than outside, and Alexa shot a none-too-kind look in Gavin's direction as she removed her jacket. For a second, she hugged herself tightly and glared around the room, as if the fire in her gaze could warm her skin, but she soon realized the futility of the gesture and let her arms slip down to her sides in reluctant defeat. Fuck it. Being cold for one night was well worth a guaranteed four hundred bucks and a place to sleep. That's what she told herself. The army of tiny goose bumps rising on her shoulders disagreed vehemently, as did the faint shiver that had just begun its slow creep up her back.

Sam, of course, noticed both the goose bumps and the shiver, and he subconsciously reached for his jacket before realizing that he wasn't wearing it. No, he was wearing the hideous sweater. And yes, he could take it off and give it to Alexa, but that would make him look like less of a prick and less of a dick, and tonight Sam was supposed to work both those angles to their limits. He let his hand drop back to his side. Geez though: being a jerk felt like crap.

"Straighten up," Gavin hissed from behind. "Smile. Remember, dude? We're going for cocky here."

Without looking, Sam reached back to smack the demon— "Ow. Dude!" —but he adjusted his posture and expression as directed.

Rubbing the side of his head and scowling, Gavin slunk away to skulk in a shadowy corner while Sam and Alexa strode up to the bar together.

The bartender was in the middle of taking someone else's order, but this didn't stop Sam from commanding, "Two beers," as he and Alexa slipped onto adjacent stools.

"Yeah, I'll get to you in just a sec," the guy mumbled, scribbling the other people's requests down on a little notepad.

Sam flared his nostrils at the man's back with an irritated curl of his lips. Already the surrounding bar-goers were gracing him with subtle, but still distinctly disapproving glances. Alexa looked down at the counter with a little sigh, like she was embarrassed to be in public with someone so rude. Although he hid it carefully, Sam was impressed… and also a bit resentful that it had been Gavin who'd discovered her rather than him. Outwardly, he forced his fingers into an impatient and obtrusively loud drumming motion against the smooth tiled slab, and again, the surrounding people glanced up with lowered eyebrows and heavy frowns. Sam scanned the faces quickly: three young blond women, an older couple, a group of dudes probably in their thirties or early forties… Picking the target was Gavin's job, and there were many more people for him to choose from sitting at tables around the room, but still, Sam was betting he'd settle on one of these guys. They were big men, coats stained and with lots of rumpled or bulging pockets, thick lace-up boots swallowing their ankles… all good indicators that they were no-nonsense hick-type people and would be game to defend their hometown once Sam got around to insulting it.

Fantastic. Sam licked his lips and spun on the stool to face Alexa. "Slow service here," he mumbled.

"Chill, Frank," she said, shooting him a brief glare, "the guy's working as fast as he can."

Sam snorted and maintained his drumming rhythm. "Then I guess people are just slow around here."

Alexa put a hand to her mouth to hide her smile as the scuffing and screeching of wood on tile surrounded them; the nearest people were scooting their stools away. Wow. That was fast. Perhaps he was being a bit too obnoxious…

"Forget the beer," Sam ordered the bartender, who was still busy mixing up whatever the other customers had ordered. "We'll have whiskey."

"I'd rather have beer," Alexa told him.

"Don't be like that, baby," Sam retorted, not even glancing at her. "Have a little fun."

"I'd really rather—"

"Two whiskeys," Sam repeated, speaking to the bartender.

"Yeah, hang on," the guy said. His voice was a shade less polite than it'd been the first time. "There are other orders I've gotta finish up first."

"Whatever, man," Sam drawled, "just don't take all night."

…

Watching from the corner, Gavin pressed his lips tightly together. He was impressed. The way Sam was letting his joints slip looser with each un-touched round, his voice slur louder, the twist of his lips nastier… He hadn't taken the kid for the type of guy who could swing an act like that. Then again, he hadn't initially thought Sam could do much of anything, but it'd turned out he'd been Lucifer's vessel the whole time, not to mention one fucking bad-ass of a demon-hunter (according to Denice at least). So hey, Gavin was willing to accept that the Winchester kid was full of surprises… And that meant he had to play this next step extra careful.

_You shouldn't do this_, Nikhil, who already knew vaguely what he was planning, chipped in. _It's not that I like this Sam person all that much, but you shouldn't get someone hurt on purpose; it's not nice._

_I'm a demon, Nikhil_, Gavin sighed back at his brain buddy, _I do not so nice things from time to time. Anyway, it's not like this is purely for the sake of causing bodily harm; it's more of a… nudge in the right direction. Little bit of instigation. You'll see._

_I don't want to see, _Nikhil protested, crossing the trails of thought that made up his arms_. I want you to stop._

_And I want to be on a Tahitian beach with Jennifer Aniston, _Gavin snapped back_, but we don't always get what we want, do we?_

Nikhil pouted instead of responding because he could sense Gavin's focus shift back to their murky, alcohol-laden surroundings and knew that the demon wouldn't notice the wordless spikes of his glares. No, Gavin's brain was now consumed completely by his lovely little schemes. Plots and dots. Boy oh boy, did he love a good bit of manipulation!

Skinny, drunk, brash, and alone… those were the type of people who'd make ideal marks for the gig, and Gavin had long ago picked these suckers out of the crowd. They were the type of people who'd be more than willing to take a shot at bringing Sam down off his high horse, and, more importantly, the type of people who wouldn't be able to do shit about it once they realized they were being played.

But that's not the type of person Gavin settled on. Oh no… his plans extended far beyond the night's money-making agenda… far, far beyond… and he knew just what to look for to get him there. Yes, he'd already chosen his mark. Now he just had to wait for Sam and Alexa to scoot their pretty little asses over to the swamp-colored felt of the pool table, and then he'd make his move.

It didn't take too long.

"Come on, baby," Sam drawled, "let's play a game."

"Pool's not really my thing," Alexa protested, but Sam grabbed her arm anyway, and, when he began to tug, she couldn't well resist. She stumbled off the stool onto the floor with a little gasp and a brief but flaming glare for Sam. For his part, Sam just kept dragging, like he didn't notice or didn't care. He marched straight across the room, the reluctant girl in tow, and everybody in the whole bar peeked up from behind their bottles to watch.

Damn, Gavin thought as he traced the sloppy slap of Sam's shoes on the tile and the seductive back-and-forth swing of Alexa's hips… they _were_ good.

Sam thrust a stick into her hands. "Hit the ball with the thin end," he commanded, doll-like lips stretching into the kind of smirk that reeked of condescension.

Alexa glared again, but accepted the stick. She stepped quickly around the table so that there was the whole long stretch of green between her and Sam.

Go time for Gavin. He hopped off his chair and wound between tables and chattering people towards the counter, pushing through curtains of cigarette smoke and hating the fact that he coughed. Already, he felt stupid for being dressed in over-sized clothes, shoes that caused his feet to slip with each touch-down, and a week respiratory system didn't help, but he pushed this aside with a scowl and took the open stool next to the four big hicks. They were already frowning over their shoulders at the brandy-tinted corner where Sam and Alexa stood, so Gavin didn't hesitate to stick in, "You know he's forcing her to bet against him?"

It wasn't true, but it didn't matter. Three of the guys turned to look at him, eyebrows still lowered from the scowls they'd been aiming Sam's way. The last guy kept on glaring at the distant pool game.

"What a dick," one of the dude's said with a dark shake of his head.

"She's a local girl, too," his buddy added. "I've seen her around." He spared another quick scowl back at Sam. "It's fucked up how people think they can come in here and just—" He gestured at the pool table instead of elaborating verbally and then, mimicking his blond friend, shook his head and hunched so low over his beer that the coarse hairs of his beard were practically scraping the rim. "Fucked up," he repeated in a mutter.

Gavin nodded and tried to copy the disapproving downturns of their mouths. "If I was any good at the game, I'd show him what's what," he growled. "I doubt he's nearly as talented as he seems to think he is."

"Oh, he's not," Blondie said. "I know a thing or two about it, and—" He jerked his head to the side with a small smirk. "—well, let's just say pretty-boy there could learn a thing or two from the townies."

"Tom could whoop his ass," the bearded man nodded into his bottle. He darted smiling eyes towards the one guy who was still glaring daggers at the unfolding pool match. "Ain't that right, Tom?"

Tom faced them with a slow rotation of his head, his mouth set in a deep frown. "Damn straight," he growled.

Careful to keep his voice light and with a sideways flick of his eyes at the burly giant called Tom, Gavin said, "You should do it. The way it looks to me, you might get to take home more than his money."

At this all four of the men turned to stare at Alexa. Her backside was facing them, and Gavin watched with a satisfied lick of his lips as their eyes hugged down the curves of her ass.

After several long moments, Tom tore his eyes away and snorted. "If she likes guys like that, I don't think so."

Gavin shrugged. "I don't know that she's digging pretty-boy. Look. She's put the whole damn table between them."

They took the excuse to spend another minute staring.

Finally, Blondie stuck in, "You should do it, Tom." He turned reluctantly back into the conversation. "The guy's probably loaded. You might be able to pull us a couple hundred 'fore he quits."

Tom snorted. "Who says I'm sharing?" he asked with a mischievous glint in his pale eyes.

"That mean you're doing it?" the bearded man demanded, the challenge in his smile partially obscured by the bottle pressed to his lips.

Tom's mouth contracted into a thoughtful pucker. "I think I will," he grumbled at last. "Someone's gotta put him in line."

"Atta boy!"

They clapped him on the back, shoving him on his way towards the table, and then continued to watch surreptitiously over their shoulders. The man's boots clomped against the tiles with dull booms. Although several inches shorter than Sam, he cut an impressive figure through the crowd with his thick shoulders. Heads turned. The honey-toned glow around the stretch of felt where Alexa and Sam stood heated up to an ember-like burn as Tom stopped abruptly beside them.

Alexa glanced up through mascara-heavy lashes and gave him a subtle once-over, but not so subtle that he didn't notice. Sam frowned through narrowed eyes as he too caught the look.

"What's up, buddy," he said to the newcomer, acting like everything was all cool. "Looking for a few pointers?"

Tom's smile was tepid. "Hoping to take over from the lady actually. Heard you were interested in putting some money on it."

Sam's smirk rested on the big man for a moment before slipping over to Alexa. "You wouldn't mind, would you baby?"

"Not at all," Alexa said, eyes all for Tom as she handed him her stick. When they were close enough together, she mouthed, "Thanks," before backing out of the hot light to watch from a slight distance. Although she was supposed to keep her attention fixed on Tom, she thought her eyes were shadowed enough from where she was standing that she could safely examine Sam without anyone being the wiser. She was an independent woman and she was one-hundred-and-fifty-percent done with guys, but that didn't mean she couldn't appreciate certain aspects of her partner's physique. The way the soft cotton of the sweater tightened over his shoulder blades as he leaned across the table to re-set the triangle for instance. Or the knowing darkness that sparked up in his otherwise soft eyes as he said, "You wanna break?" None of it meant a fucking thing. She was gonna be gone at the break of dawn tomorrow anyway, as soon as she had the cash.

Giving her head a sharp shake, she flicked her gaze away from Sam's hands and over to Tom, who had graciously declined Sam's offer. They'd started small — two tens crumpled side by side on the fake-wood frame — and the paper vibrated softly as the white ball cracked into the triangle and set heavy solids and stripes clunking off the felted walls. None went in, and Sam swore under his breath. "Bad start," he said.

"Better luck next time," Tom smiled coolly as he hefted his own stick and began a pale-eyed sweep of the table. "We calling pockets?"

"Just for the eight ball," Sam said, unable to stop himself from shooting a tiny smile Alexa's way as his opponent hunkered down to take the next shot. Alexa bit her lip and refocused her eyes on the broad-shouldered hick.

"Are you going for solids or stripes?" she asked.

He was too concentrated on the prepping slips of his stick to look up, but he let out a grunt as he said, "Come on over and see for yourself, honey."

Restraining the glare that was begging to slip loose, she followed orders and sauntered up beside him. "The three?" she said.

"Yeah," he grinned, although his eyes remained fixed on the three ball. "Looks like you do know a thing or two about pool."

Wanting to punch him, Alexa forced herself to smile. "One or two."

Tom's stick jerked forward and struck the white ball with a sharp smack. It cracked into the three ball, and the three ball rolled home. Corner pocket. They could hear it trundling smugly down the internal tracks, echoing back up through the pocket holes. Tom's lips pulled back silently as he flashed his eyebrows at Alexa. He lined up for his next shot, and such the game progressed. Sam made a few in, but Tom won within the space of ten minutes.

"Huh. Congratulations," Sam said, taking a long swallow of whiskey. "You're not bad."

Tom smirked. "Neither are you," he lied. "Up for another game?"

Sam hesitated but nodded. "Yeah." He pulled out a twenty this time. "Let's go." With another gulp, he set the whiskey glass down and returned to the table.

The next two games went much the same. Progressively, Sam made fewer of his shots. He let his words slur further, his voice change volume at the wrong times, his arms slip and slop as he tried to steady his stick… And he kept betting higher. Between what he'd been guarding for this purpose and what Alexa had reluctantly contributed, Sam had a little over three hundred bucks to burn, and by the end of the third game, he was already down eighty. So, although it was sooner than he would've liked, if he was going to make this worth their while, he had to turn the tables soon.

Alexa had helped a lot. Over the course of the matches, she'd been hanging closer and closer to Tom's side, shooting him appraising glances and smiles from time to time. For his part, Tom couldn't keep his eyes off her. From her stomach down, she was better than an Alabama Slammer, and he was more drunk off the roll of her hips than they could've gotten him with any type of alcohol.

"Last one," Sam said, letting the words tumble mushily over his tongue. "Gimme a chance to win it back. Two twenty." He slammed the bills onto the table.

Tom licked his lips as he looked between the money and the girl. In sharp contrast to his, her eyes were dark, questioning… slightly daring. "You got the balls?" they seemed to say.

He did. "Two twenty," he nodded with another swipe of his tongue across his bottom lip. He waved his friends over from the counter to get the necessary cash, and then, with a cocky smile, said, "You can even break."

Sam pressed his lips together almost painfully to prevent the relieved grin from giving him away. Money first. Then business. Only once the bills had been stretched out safely beside his own on the side of the table did he let the glazed look slip out of his eyes.

Alexa dug her nails into the fake wood and leaned out over the swampy stretch of fabric. She had nothing but Gavin's word that Sam could play, and if he failed, it was seventy dollars-worth of her own hard-earned cash down the drain, so she held her breath as he lined up for the starting shot.

Crack! The white ball snapped across the felt and hit the triangle with a satisfying click. Two solids jumped off the formation and zoomed into the far-side corner pockets, dropping into the tunnels with heavy clunks that shocked a look of horror onto Tom's broad face. Sam straightened and stalked around the side of the table with his lower lip tucked thoughtfully under his teeth. All signs of inebriation had fallen away, and he settled into his next shot with delicate and calculated adjustments. Another solid zipped home… and another. The shock on Tom's face contorted into flushing anger. Oh, he knew alright. Sam avoided his gaze, just slid from one point to the next as the fifth, sixth and seventh solids found pockets of their own. He didn't even look up when he called the eight ball's pocket, but his voice erased the last of Tom's doubts; there was no slur to his speech, no lopsided intonation. Sam was completely sober, and Tom knew it, and he knew he'd had one pulled over on him. As Sam's hand slipped the money off the table and into his pocket, Tom's world faded to red. The blood rose thick behind his eyes and ears, all sounds and sights drowned by the pounding.

Sam noticed the white-knuckled clench of the other man's hand on his stick and met Alexa's eyes with a quick jerk of his head towards the door. Time to get out. She nodded, scooped up her jacket, and followed, steps tight and purposeful. They wove between tables and chairs in the most direct route to the exit.

From his stool at the counter, Gavin watched through black and flicking irises. His tongue swiped out across his lips. Before he ducked out, he wanted to make sure part two was shaping up as planned, and, sure enough, there the three big dudes went, plopping off their stools with confused scowls. Poor little Tommy spun to face them, and his face said it all.

Gavin's lips contorted into a crooked smile. Good. Now he could go.

"Nice meeting you guys," he said to the hicks' backs. "I think it's time I was heading home, but I hope to see you again sometime."

Blondie turned, the confusion cutting ever deeper tracts across his forehead. Gavin flashed him a grin, dipped his hands into his over-large pockets, and sped off towards the door at a sloppy trot. Alexa and Sam were waiting just around the corner, and they shot him identical glares as he sauntered up.

"The hell were you doing?" Sam demanded.

"Chill, dude." The demon held up his hands in defense. "I'm a slow walker."

Sam cocked his head to the side in an irritated jerk. "Well speed it up next time, would you?"

Gavin made a face.

Alexa frowned at the both of them. "Let's just get out of here."

But they didn't make it far.

"Hold it right there, fuckers!"

It was Tom, of course… plus his three, large, muscular, and pissed-off friends. Sam glanced over his shoulder, calculated that they were too close to make a clean escape, and spun back around to Gavin and Alexa.

"Get the car," he commanded, grabbing the money and keys out of his pocket and stuffing them into Alexa's fist. "And then get me."

He gave them each a push to get them moving and then pivoted towards the approaching men. There was a brief calm before the storm. All he could hear was the rapidly retreating slaps of Alexa's and Gavin's shoes on the pavement, the slower, heavier steps of the angry guys, and his own accelerating heart. He tensed his hands in preparation. Fuck Gavin for making him leave the knife! And then the guys were on him.

Sam wasn't one of the world's best hunters for nothing, but it was four to one. There were too many blows to block; he did his best to deflect them from the more crucial parts of his body, but he couldn't cover everything. No head. No stomach. And even with the tight guard he kept on his soft spots, it still hurt like no fucking other when the bearded guy's fist collided with his shoulder, or when the shortest dude landed a kick solidly on the back of his calf. When Tom hit his knee, Sam's resolution to stay on the defensive cracked and he lashed out at the other man's unprotected face.

Thunk! His knuckles collided sharply with bone and Tom swore.

"Fuck you," one of the others grunted. In the middle of ducking under Tom's wild return blow, Sam couldn't tell who. "Fucking thief."

"I won it," Sam growled, spinning to punch down the guy behind him, "So fuck yourself."

A fist glanced off his ribs with a sharp sting. Damn it! Where the hell was Gavin? If they'd taken off with the car and left him—

A horn blasted down the street. "Dude! Move your ass!"

Sam had never thought he'd be so relieved to hear a demon's voice. He snapped an elbow back into Blondie's chest, struck the bearded guy across the face, and stumbled out of the tight ring in a direct line for the car. He forced his bruised legs into a sprint and dove for the opening passenger's door, Tom only two meters behind.

"Drive!" he snapped at Alexa, who was already flooring it. The tires screeched and the Honda jumped forward, the sudden acceleration causing the open door to slam shut just as Tom slammed his fist against the side. The metal vibrated with his blow, but they were off. From his awkward position piled on top of the groaning demon, Sam twisted to stare out the rear window at the shrinking group of angry men. Through the glass rectangle, they just looked like black smudges against a murky gray background… harmless. But the ragged draws of Sam's breath and the stabs of the swelling patches along his legs and sides said otherwise.

"Get off me!" Gavin wheezed. "Fuck, you're heavy!"

Sam ignored him, too busy catching his breath and too sore to move just yet.

Alexa's eyes were all for the road, but the tightness of her jaw spoke to the adrenaline pumping through her system.

Gavin continued to grumble, but the two humans stayed silent. They let the frozen air wash away their nerves and listened to the soothing rumble of the engine and the drum of pavement under tires.

Finally, once out of the town and surrounded by the darkness of trees, Sam turned to scan Alexa's profile. Her breathing was still a bit heavier than usual, but some of the tightness had dissolved from her muscles.

"You up for the other runs?" he asked, frowning at the rasp in his voice, "Or you wanna call it quits for the night?"

Her head flicked quickly towards him and then back to the night-blackened asphalt. In the shadowy interior of the car, all Sam could make out was the sliding glint in the whites of her eyes, no way to determine expression.

"You insane?" she asked. She articulated the words sharply, but there was no fire behind them. "Do _I_ wanna call it quits? _You're_ the one who just got beat up, mi amigo."

"Can you get off?" Gavin interjected. He tried to shift under Sam's weight but couldn't quite manage it. "Dude, this is really uncomfortable."

Sam acted like he hadn't heard and responded to Alexa instead. "I'm fine," he said. "My face is still pretty—" He allowed himself a dry smile. "—and everything else is covered, so, far's I'm concerned, we're good to go. S'long as you're sure you're okay."

"Just 'cause I got a pussy doesn't mean I am one," she glared. "Long as you say you're not gonna throw up or anything, I say we got a lotta money to make."

Sam's lips tugged up at the corners. "Okay then. On to Vallecito it is."

"Great," Gavin groaned. "Now can you get off? Please?"

Still smiling, Sam complied, crawling between the seats into the back. He bent to peer out the window at the blurred California landscape. The air outside was too dry for snow, so brittle with cold that he could practically hear it shattering as the car snapped down the highway, and against the bruised blue of the achingly clear night sky, the silhouettes of the fir trees seemed to cut sharp holes into black nothingness, like tears in the universe. The moon, for her part, snuck low along the horizon, only visible now and then in short flashes between the dark spires of the forest, which was thickening as they headed east into the mountains.

Beautiful... The earth, Sam realized, was gorgeous. Not kind. Not innocent. Not sweet… but beautiful. Nature was never evil, never manipulative, never cruel. It just was.

…Not like people. People lied and hurt each other. People could be evil. People — all of mankind — had an unmatched capacity for cruelty, and sometimes, in silent moments like these, with the dark grace of the wilderness pressing in on all sides and his own human body aching six ways from Sunday due to wounds inflicted by other people, Sam wondered if the planet wouldn't be better off without them.


	14. Chapter 14

**Hey y'all. Sorry I haven't posted in a while; life's gettin' busy… but that's not why I'm wasting your time with this author's note. No, this author's note is to explain the timeframe I'm running with. I've been trying to keep it fairly consistent between Sam and Dean, but for this chapter it's jumping back to where I left Dean, Bobby and Anne in that mud clearing, which is roughly 24 hours before where we just finished up with Sam. So, Sam's still asleep in the stolen car in Angels Camp and hasn't yet woken up to discover Alexa there. I'm also kind of sweeping time zones under the rug and pretending they don't exist. Maybe I'll pay them some mind later, but today is not their lucky day.**

**That's all! Hope you like the chapter.**

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CHAPTER 14:

After about an hour of Dean's nothing-shall-stand-in-my-way, break-neck driving, Bobby had had quite enough. He was using ski poles, after all, and every time Dean made a sharp and unexpected turn (which happened far too often), he found himself wrestling with the damn things and muttering "Balls!" through his mustache. Damn kid. No way he hadn't seen that stop sign! Was the idiot trying to kill him? Off his damn rocker; that's what he was! So, fumbling about with the poles and the wheel and the folds of his jacket, and swearing like a peg-legged sailor, Bobby finally managed to shake his phone loose and make a call.

"You don't stop driving, I'm gonna disown you."

And apparently Dean was too tired to remember that Bobby had never officially adopted him in the first place — or maybe for once he just got it through his thick head how crazy stupid he was being — but, either way, he grunted an assent and rolled off to the shoulder, Bobby following with a relieved sigh that he tried to hide under a growled, "Idjit."

They slept until just before dawn, at which point the fingers of blue that tinged the horizon managed to poke Dean out of his less-than-restful naptime. Mumbling incoherently at Anne, Dean went to grouch Bobby awake, and then, coaxing their cold and grumbling engines back to life, they hit the road. It was still a damn long way to California.

As the mile-markers ticked by, a lopsided silence crept up through the Impala's vents and settled into a solid lurk between driver and shotgun, a bit like a self-satisfied cat. On Dean's part, it was a stewing silence. Brain still clogged with sleep-goo, he kept misidentifying the knot of long, dark hair to his right for another, equally dark, although not quite as long, mat. After all, his gourd thought it had long ago sorted out exactly what kind of bitch always occupied that seat, and it wasn't switching gears with the ease Dean would've liked. Every time his peripheral vision flicked to the side, it triggered the wrong domino chain of neurons firing up to his skull and flung him into a violent double take. And, every time, it was only a split second before the rational parts of his mental process crossed their arms at the rest of his brain and grumbled, "That's a woman, you dumbass. Taken you this long to work out your brother's a dude?" Dean, grumbling silently back at his gray matter, would then attempt to shut down his peripheral vision by focusing his glare firmly on the scenery ahead. Each passing cornfield — each barbed-wire fence, farmhouse, cow, car, grease-spot, you name it — became the object of his directed hatred, the devil's spawn. Suckers thought they could stop him from getting to Sam and giving that son-of-a-bitch the serious beat down he deserved? Well… they were wrong.

Anne's quietness was much less intense: equal parts curiosity and awkwardness. She could feel the sizzle of Dean's silence like pricks of static electricity across her arms. It was exciting the little hairs there to stand on end as if they were radio towers, desperately trying to boost the signal. A tweak here, a fidget there, and perhaps she could tune in to Radio Glen and get a good hard look at his innermost thoughts.

Since that was impossible — and even someone as loopdy-doopdy as Anne knew it — her skin was itching for the second best thing, which was to jump into a hands-down, all-out interrogation. She knew beyond a doubt that Glen — or Dean, or whatever his name was — and that other guy, Bobby, and Glen's brother, too, all had some deliciously complex drama/plot thingamajig going down here, and she wanted to splay it all out in neat, printed letters on flat-ironed, white pages for the world to see. However, the sour-apple, I-want-to-strangle-the-pavement look that Glen — Dean… whatever — was shooting the road reined in her urges and sent her sniffing for a more subtle approach.

So she said, "Um… Glen," and then coughed as she realized just how horrible her morning voice sounded. "Uh," she began again, testing to make sure her vocal chords were behaving at least reasonably predictably before continuing, "Once we get to Angels Camp… how do you intend to actually find your brother?"

Dean didn't turn to look at her, but his mouth twitched, which she took to be a good sign… maybe. "He stands out in a crowd," he growled at last. "Somebody will've seen him."

Behind her glasses, Anne's eyelids crinkled together in skepticism. "That's your plan?"

"Lady," Dean began, and then, not quite believing he was actually saying it, corrected himself, "Anne… I can't stop you from doing your little writing thing or whatever, but stay out of my job, okay? I know what I'm doing."

Anne, never one to take words at face value, let her narrowed peepers zip from his static-fired eyes, to nose-tip, to spiky chin stubble, and back. Hmmm… More than a dash of pessimism, she decided. Definitely a good bit of anger. Determination. Traces of worry? Fear? She'd like to think so; it made for a more complex character. She'd write it in either way. Glen had to be—

"Is your name really Glen?"

Dean was getting used to these abrupt interruptions, so he maintained his barbed-wire-prickly eye-lock on the asphalt as he snorted, "To you, yeah."

"What does that mean?"

"Means I don't want my name in another friggin' book."

Anne's eyes narrowed to teensy-tinsy crescents of baby-boy blue. "But you admit that it's not the name your mother gave you?"

Dean's gaze sighed up to the roof. Please, God, make this woman a mute! "No. Okay. Not mom-given."

Anne rolled her pen with relish. Dean then. She tucked her lips in to ward off the encroaching smile as she swooshed the inky point down to her notepad. It was a better fit than Glen anyway. Gruffer, romantic… a bit old-fashioned. Like James Dean. More people would want to read about a Dean than a Glen.

But she still needed more. She glanced up at her protagonist's stone-faced profile and pushed out an awkward little cough. "So then," she started up once more, "who's that other man… Bobby? Why's he involved in your family drama?"

Dean opened his mouth to protest the bit about family drama, but quickly closed it and resigned himself to shooting a dirty look her way. "Family friend," he grumbled at last.

"What happened to him?"

"Can we cut the NCIS crap? Please? If you have to ask your damn questions, at least try to not be so creepy about it. You're making me feel like I'm on camera."

"Just paper," she assured him.

"Great," Dean huffed, raising a hand in exasperation before slamming it back onto the wheel. "And that's _so_ much better."

"Well," Anne began, knowing he hadn't really wanted a response but unable to help herself, "It's less set-in-stone, classier… and there's lower circulation."

Dean grunted.

Anne took this as her cue to continue. "So," she pressed. "Bobby. Um…Is he fond of reckless outdoor activities?"

Despite himself, Dean snorted. "You're really bad at this."

Anne's cheeks went a bit pink. "There's a reason I write and don't talk," she mumbled.

Dean was about to agree with another very articulate snort when he was pulled up short by a spark of white hot light zapping across the windshield. He almost slammed on the breaks, but jerked his foot back just before it made contact with the pedal. The brightness was gone as soon as it had begun, leaving only a streaked after-image carved into his retinas.

"The fuck was that?" he huffed, half-squinting, half-glaring up through the windshield at the graying sky.

"I… I think it was a shooting star," Anne stuttered, eyes blown wide as she too stared upwards through the window.

Huh. Dean hunched back into his seat. "Bright-ass son-of-a-bitch," he grumbled under his breath.

He'd just managed to blink away the line the star'd left across his vision and release the last of his pent-up tension when a sudden blast of noise blew his brain from zero to sixty in one millisecond flat. The hell!

It was the blare of a horn, the horn of a sports car that was painted the obnoxiously eye-popping color of an artificial cherry. "Son-of-a-bitch," Dean muttered darkly as the car snapped over the double yellow lines into the other lane and revved its engine to kick its speed up to ninety. It passed in a hot thunderclap of wind and then tore down the road ahead, missing Dean's expressive hand gesture in the snarling cloud of dust it left behind.

"Bitch," Dean growled again once the dust had finally cleared to reveal an empty road, the sports car having raced far out of eyeshot.

"Complete assholes," Anne agreed.

Dean nodded with a concurring snort until it hit him that it was Anne who'd just said that. Huh. He hadn't thought "asshole" was really Anne's style, definitely pegged her as more of a candy-cane, straight-laced type girl… not that he was gonna complain or nothing.

"Stabbed," he said.

Anne's eyes fixed upon his in dish-round surprise. "What?"

"Bobby," he grunted. "You wanted to know what happened to Bobby."

"He was stabbed?"

Dean nodded, pretending he didn't notice the way Anne's fingers had begun to twitch back towards the surface of her notepad.

"Why? By who?" the knobby-kneed woman pressed, voice gone genuinely shocked.

Dean gave a quiet, though drier-than-the-Mojave-desert, snort. "By himself actually. He, uh… he was possessed by a demon, and it was about to kill me, so he managed to get control back somehow and he stabbed himself. Saved my hide."

"Wow," Anne breathed. "And now he can't walk?"

"No, it was just a childhood dream of his to drive with ski poles," Dean grumbled sarcastically, feeling the early symptoms of guilt begin to nibble around the edges of his stomach. "Of course he can't walk!"

Anne looked away in vague embarrassment. "Right," she mumbled. She still wasn't sure how she felt about this whole demons and angels thing, though. On the one hand, Dean and Bobby seemed pretty sane… (and all that heaven and hell stuff would make for a real page-turner). On the other hand… demons? Anne had been raised in a nonspecific Christian household, so, some sort of higher power? Sure. But she was a longshot from burning Jesus into her toast, and even further from seeing demons in her coffee cup or tealeaves or whatever. They just — they didn't exist.

In an attempt to move away from this theological dilemma, Anne was about to dig into the meat of the matter by asking Dean how he'd ended up split from Sam, but before she could do more than open her mouth, the harsh chords of a ringtone cut her off. Dean frowned over with lowered eyebrows.

"Can you get that?" he said. "It's in the glove compartment."

Anne stared back in surprise for a half-second before shaking herself out of it and saying, "Yeah… yes," as she fumbled with the latch mechanism. "Hello?"

There was a short pause on the other end of the line. "Um… I… is — is this Dean's phone?"

"Yes. Um, he's driving."

"Who is it?" Dean hissed at her.

She shook her head to indicate her ignorance as the other person stuttered, "Oh, well, uh… this is Chuck. Can you maybe tell him to call me back?"

"Chuck," Anne told Dean, holding his gaze.

"Yes?" Chuck said, surprised.

"Put him on speaker," Dean commanded.

Anne did.

"Chuck?" Dean said.

"Dean?"

Dean rolled his eyes at the uncertainty in the prophet's tone. "Yeah, it's me, Chuck. What's up?"  
"I thought you were driving."

"I am. It's this little thing called speaker phone. Maybe you've heard of it." And then, eyebrows shrugging up he added, "though I guess you're a big enough hermit that maybe you haven't."

Chuck took the jibe with only a resentful moment of silence before saying, "So, um… who's your friend?"

"Anne," Dean said. "Anne meet Chuck. Chuck meet Anne. She's an author, too."

"He's an author?" Anne said. Her eyes popped wide as they hopped back and forth between Dean and the phone, which lay face-up on her palm.

Chuck coughed. "Yep. That's right," and, after an awkward pause, "So, um… What have you written?"

A rosy shade crept under Anne's skin. "Well. I mean, I haven't actually published anything yet. I'm still getting my PhD." She too coughed. "But, um, I'm working on something right now, based around Dean and his adventures."

"What?" Chuck practically choked. "Dean!" His voice had skittered up two octaves and seized in on itself. "Dean, you're… But I'm the prophet! Those are my books; you can't just… I — I have rights! Copyrights and… and other rights!"

"Calm down, man," Dean ordered as he rubbed his right eye. "No one's ever gonna connect the two. I mean, seriously, how many people have even read your stuff?"

There was another moment of stony silence on Chuck's end. "I am not okay with this," he said at last.

"Okay with what?" Anne managed to sputter out at last. She was beyond lost. "What's going on?"

"Chuck," Dean said with a dry arch of his brows, "has his own series about me," and then raising his voice over the road noise, "What's it called again?"

"Supernatural," Chuck muttered.

"Right," Dean nodded. "Supernatural. He's a prophet; sees everything that's gonna happen to Sam and me and uses it to write his freakin' books." With a growl he stuck on, "Totally uncool by the way. I swear I'm gonna round up all the copies one of these days and have myself a nice little bonfire. Cookout maybe."

"That's not funny, Dean," Chuck mumbled.

"Eh, kinda is."

Only static came from the other end of the line. Dean rolled his eyes. "Okay, come on. Quit pouting, man. What'd you call about?"

Chuck took another second to let Dean understand the depth of his unhappiness before responding coolly, "I called to let you know that Sam will be gone by the time you get to Angels Camp."

"What! He's leaving already?"

"No. He's still there. He's going to be there all day, but, uh… you're about to get caught up with something else."

"You serious? What?"

"You'll—"

And because Dean's luck was worse than having the flu on prom night, that's when he suddenly lost service.

"Son-of-a-bitch!" he snapped as the phone began to beep. "Couldn't wait three fucking seconds to crap out on me?"

"Um… Dean?" Anne was looking out the windshield, the morning light turning the lenses of her glasses bright and opaque, so he couldn't see the open stare of her eyes.

"Yeah, what," Dean growled, grabbing the useless piece of technological shit that was supposed to be a fucking cellular phone out of her hand and flinging it into the backseat where it belonged. Let it think about its actions for a while.

Anne's only response was to shake her head and point, which eventually Dean noticed. He followed the line of her extended arm through the windshield and down the road to the small town they were approaching.

At first it looked normal. Just another no-name piece of crap in the middle of south-central Nebraska (aka: nowhere). A sign tacked to a proud picket pole announced it as Edison, one of those white-bread, washed-out pinpricks that everybody forgets to include on the map, desperately clinging to existence.

Today it was clinging a bit more desperately than usual. It had to or it else it would've been blown away by the nuclear outbreak of crazy that was sweeping through its streets. Now that they were close, Dean could see what Anne had already begun to make out. There was a powder blue Ford truck blocking the road; it was upside down, one tire rotating slowly as if in a feeble cry for help. Beyond that, the town itself seemed deserted. Storefront windows were smashed. The otherwise dry gutters were sticky with spots of splattered red.

Dean pulled the Impala up short on the shoulder, squinted eyes flashing across the brown line of the horizon. Everything around the town seemed calm… which was creepy as fuck by the way. There was just this huge expanse of dull, rolling fields, the tops of a few grain silos glinting in the distance like pale monsters, and the bitter quiet of the land. When Bobby pulled up behind Dean and parked, that silence became complete.

With a frustrated grunt, Dean shoved open the door and marched over to the driver's side of Bobby's truck. "The hell's going on here?" he demanded with a dark frown back towards the overturned Ford.

Bobby just shook his head, face plastered with a new batch of wrinkles. "Be damned if I know," he muttered. "Looks to me, though, like we've found a place where the apocalypse ain't just simmering in its juices. Something big musta happened here."

Dean snorted in agreement. "Question is: what?"

"You gonna go find out?"

"What, and leave you here alone with the stick-bug?" Dean gave him a "Seriously?" look. "Exactly what d'you plan to do if whatever caused that mess comes back this way."

Pulling his chin in as if offended, Bobby said. "I got guns. Don't forget, boy, I'm the one who taught you to shoot. Still got better aim than either you or your brother."

"What if it's not something shootable?"

"Then the time is nigh!" Bobby rolled his eyes. "Look y'idjit, it's the apocalypse, or haven't you noticed? We do what we can to stop it or we're all dead anyway, and it looks damn well likely to me that this is something apocalyptic—" He gestured towards the town with one rough hand. "—so you get your ass over there and sort it out or I'm gonna do it myself, wheelchair an' all!"

Dean scowled but gave a single jerk of his head, which Bobby decided to interpret as a nod. "Good," he said gruffly. "Then get gone."

Dean had already made it back to the Impala's trunk before Bobby remembered another thing. "Oh," he said, craning his head out the window, "and send over your stick-bug.


	15. Chapter 15

**I owe you all an apology and here it is: I am ridiculously sorry for how long it took me to write and post this. I got caught up on my other stories, and since this is my piece with the lowest readership, I figured it was the best one to neglect. That doesn't make it okay, though. For any of you who are still reading this after my many-month absence, thank y'all so much for sticking with. Again, I'm really sorry, and I'm gonna try to split myself more evenly between all three of my stories as we get towards summer.**

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CHAPTER 15:

Dean considered and dismissed the possibility that he should call Cas. Cas had made it clear — plain as a poodle — that he had his own shit up skywards to deal with — finding God and all — and he didn't need to be bothered by a phone call from Nowhere, Nebraska. Who knew if he'd even pick up?

No, Dean had been handling crap like this since long before that socially incompetent little line-toer had winged his feathery ass down from on high, and he could damn well do it just fine now.

So, 12-gauge cradled in his hands, Anne's bug eyes and Bobby's grim ones following him through the white gleam of the windshield, he stalked around the belly-up Ford and down the empty asphalt stretch into Edison.

He'd only gone about a block before a quick twinge of movement caught in his peripheral vision, flickering out of sight around the edge of a rundown auto repair shop. Swishing his shotgun up to shoulder level, Dean followed with patient steps. Around the stack of sun-swollen tires and the rusty sign they propped up (which proclaimed the repair shop's creative title to be "Mark's Vehicle Maintenance" in a mix of red and black letters), he paused to make sure his breath was silent, his muscles ready, and then he swept around the corner and leveled the 12-gauge at—

"Ellen?"

Rather than any type of "hello," he was met with a cold dash of holy water shooting up his nose. He supposed he should've expected that the instant he'd recognized those creased dark eyes; she'd never exactly been the "let's talk" sort.

"Dean?"

Dean spit out the water and tried to rub it off the rest of his face. Fucking wetness. But there was nothing to be done for the stuff that'd flown up his nose. He supposed that, all said and done, nasal discomfort was a small price to pay 'cause he wasn't sure exactly where he stood with Ellen anymore. Last time they'd met had been that disaster with the Devil's Gates three odd years ago, but, you know, things had gotten just a little bit worse since then, and he didn't know if she was up to date with the extent of the damage, or, perhaps more importantly, had diagnosed the cause, which led Dean's thoughts spiraling back down into the dark pit of—

"Where's Sam?"

Exactly.

"Where's Jo?" he flung back.

Ellen sized him up between her squinted lashes, sunbaked face crinkling in deep and dry contemplation. "I don't know exactly," she said at last, letting her own unanswered question drop for the moment. "She's still off hunting on her own. Haven't heard from her in a couple weeks, but I'm not worrying yet." She used her own gun to gesture around the abandoned town. "Got enough to worry about here."

Dean took the opportunity to give the dive a more thorough scan. They were standing at the intersection of what seemed to be the only two streets worth mentioning in the entire frickin' rat hole. Nobody'd even bothered painting center lines down the asphalt ('cause, really, fuck it), and, aside from the auto repair shop, there was an impressive total of five other store-like buildings slouching along the sidewalks, all of which sported at least one smashed window. Glass flecks were everywhere, confetti after a parade, bathing in the smeared red, and here and there lay dense piles of dark cloth… the bodies.

"Huh," Dean said, demonstrating his usual stunning eloquence. "Guess you're right." He turned back to Ellen. "So, what's up with the wasteland?"

Ellen shrugged and let out a quiet snort. "Don't know exactly. Whole place took the crazy pills just this morning and—" She gestured around again. "—well, here you have it. Demons all over the place. I've only met one person so far who hasn't got the black eyes."

"Oh yeah? Who?"

Ellen almost smiled, expression dry enough to peel paint. "You."

Dean's eyebrows took a hike up his forehead. "Shit," he said.

"Yep. 'Bout sums it up," Ellen nodded, but the way she was squinting up at Dean gave him the itching-powder feeling that she had something else on her mind, and, sure enough, a second later she said, "So, sweetie, you, uh… here alone?"

Dean would much rather have focused on the situation at hand, but at least it wasn't as bad as her earlier "where's your brother" question, so he shook his head. "Nah. I got Bobby just out o' town, and this other crazy chick who's along for the ride."

"But not Sam."

Dean let his silence answer for him.

"Somethin' goin' on between you two?" Ellen pressed.

"We're taking separate vacations for the moment."

Ellen gave him a look, but all she said was, "Don't think you're getting out of that one so easy. I'm invested in you boys, and I'm gonna wanna know more later, but for now—"

"We've got bigger fish to fry," Dean finished for her. "Loch ness monster big."

Ellen's eyebrows rocked up and she nodded. "It's already been a damn mess. Guess you can tell, but I figure there must be _some _survivors 'cause the demons sure as hell ain't killin' each other off, and there are definitely dead demons layin' around."

"Huh," Dean said. "So… you got a game plan? Or are we just going with shoot first ask questions later?"

Ellen's smile was predatory. "Since when do we need a plan? I still got some ass-kicking up my sleeve."

Dean could live with that. He'd never been big on the whole "think first" thing anyway, and he was dying to go all Chuck Norris on some black-eyed motherfucker. Give him a gun and an S.O.B. to shoot any day; his brain could take a hike. So he smiled back and said, "I'm down. You know where they've holed up?"

"Not exactly," Ellen admitted, starting off south down the street and crooking her wrist for Dean to follow, "But I've got my suspicions. Last demon I put down came from behind the hardware store—" She gestured at the pitiful structure with her gun hand. "—so I figure they're somewhere that-a-way. Not really a lotta places to hide 'round here. Don't think it'll take us too long to dig 'em out."

Dean nodded, keen on staying silent now that they were actually into the hunting phase. He let his eyes roam around instead, grimly noting the blood drips that squiggled a path around the corner of the washed-out hardware building and out of sight. In the window hung an abandoned "Open" sign. Since the joint was empty, Dean figured the sign's message had become obsolete, but it still transmitted important info: whoever'd been in this town — the shopkeeper, the locals, customers, etc. — had sure cleared out in a hurry… Or they were still inside and just out of view (a.k.a. on the ground dead). 'Cause if they'd all just been moseying about, someone woulda flipped the sign before leaving, right? Not such a hard thing to do.

"Stop," Ellen whispered suddenly, gun already up and pointing, and Dean stopped. He squinted along the line of her barrel to a shoebox house about fifty yards away, colorless, crabby, and half-digested by weeds. Something moved on the porch.

In less than a second, Dean had his own gun up and ready, trained onto the figure. Eyes never leaving its short-haired head, he grunted, "Demon?"

Ellen hesitated and then nodded, lowering the gun. "Can't see its eyes," she murmured gruff and quiet, "but there's another in the window, and it's got the black."

Dean's gaze flickered to the little glass square hacked into the rotting wall, and, like Ellen'd said, there was a second hell bitch lurking there, not moving, but not looking their way either.

As Dean dropped his own gun and dug for the knife, an interesting realization dug itself into his brain, and he asked, "So how've you been icing these guys anyhow?"

"Shot up the vessels," Ellen admitted, voice weary as she remained facing the little dump of a house, "Didn't kill the bastards, but forced 'em outta here. It's cold, I know, but I ain't got time for fifty exorcisms."

"Hey, you did what you had to," Dean grunted, "Nobody ever said hunting was easy."

"You're tellin' me, sweetheart?" Ellen laughed in a single, unamused bark of a breath. She spared a moment to grace him with one of her Arizona-summer smiles, the driest of the dry. "I've been hunting since you were playing kitchen."

"Uh… kitchen?"

"Sorry," Ellen snorted, her lips twitching up again. "Reflex of having a daughter."

"Jo played kitchen? Damn." He scratched his head. "Can't say I can really picture that."

Ellen chuckled. "Nah, she's grown up a bit. It happens. But you should ask _her_ about all that. Right now, you and I better get to huntin' us some demons 'fore they realize we're hangin' here like a pair of sittin' ducks."

"Right you are," Dean nodded. He scanned the house again: the rotting peach-color of the walls, the half-collapsed porch, the single visible window as it eyed him back with equal suspicion. There was no way to tell how many demons were calling the fugly thing home, and that set Dean's hackles rising. He didn't mind going in plan-less, but he hated going in blind.

Luckily, Ellen had better eyesight. "I can see two through the window," she muttered as she squinted, "and there's the loner on the porch o' course. Figure one or two more we can't see? The house ain't big enough to fit much more than that, so I'd place my estimate at—" She frowned at the shoebox. "—five. Three for you an' your magic knife. Two for me an' my slugs." She glanced up at him then, jaw set tight. "Ready, honey?"

Dean felt his own molars lock into place. He was too hyped on adrenaline to think of anything clever, so he tossed her a toneless, "Born ready," and readjusted his grip on the knife, "Let's do this."

Side by side, Dean in front and Ellen slightly to the rear, they slunk along the sidewall of the hardware store and then around the hood of a busted, old VW bus parked out back. That was where the cover ended, though. There was a forty-foot flat stretch of dead grass, nettles and dandelions still lurking between them and the porch, and there was nothing for it but to hope that the demons had bad eyesight or bad aim or both. Otherwise they were as good as chopped sardines on toast.

"Here goes nothing," Dean grumbled, more to himself than Ellen. He patted the side of the VW bus ('cause it might very well get hit in the crossfire, and cars needed reassurance, too), and then he flung himself out onto the turf with his legs already swinging at full tilt. The demon on the porch pivoted towards him immediately. The shot it fired cracked like a whip of lightning through the silent Nebraska neighborhood, but it felt more like a slip of the kitchen knife when it grazed Dean's bicep. The short-haired demon only got out one more bullet before Dean was on him, and that one missed completely. Then the knife was in his chest and the gun clattered to the soggy wooden boards, the sound it made almost soft in comparison to its earlier rapport, which was still echoing clumsily along the passages of Dean's inner ear. He ignored it though, stepped over the body, and proceeded to stab the woman who had just run through the door to help her dead demon buddy. It was like cutting butter.

In fact, as it turned out, Ellen didn't have to do anything. Dean got all five demons, and all he got in return was one sucker punch to the stomach to accompany his stinging, bleeding hip.

"You're getting good," Ellen said as they gazed around the room together. Her voice stayed flat and hard, a mahogany tabletop, and Dean shrugged off her words.

"I'll give you a chance next time," he said.

"Don't be stupid," Ellen told him, frowning at one of the fallen demons instead of at him, "You've got the knife, and evidently you're in better upkeep." She pegged him with a short upturn of her lips, the same dry smile he'd been getting since they'd met up. "No, I think I'll head back to make sure Bobby's okay… and... you said you had someone else?"

Dean waved that off. He didn't really want to talk right now, and he definitely didn't want to talk about _Anne_.

Ellen accepted that. "Well, I'll reassure them both that we're good here. Fill them in. You know. You should sweep the town for stragglers… human or demon."

Dean nodded. It sounded hokie-dokie to him. "We stopped just east of town," he told her, "Since this dump only has two roads, I don't think you can miss it."

"True," Ellen grunted. She clapped one rough hand onto his shoulder. "Meet back up with us in half an hour, sweetie, or else I'll worry. Bobby will, too."

"Yeah, yeah, I got it."

She nodded once more and then stomped around the pooling lakes of blood on the mildewed floor and out onto the porch. Dean stared at the bodies instead of watching her go. He didn't remember them flaring up inside when they died, no second's glimpse of hellfire before the end like normal demons. Huh. He frowned at the nearest corpse, a seventy-something-year-old man. Come to think of it, the guy's eyes had been brown, too; he remembered staring into indignant, age-hardened pupils right before his knife bit between the third and fourth rib. When your eyes went black, you didn't have pupils.

Dean's nose wrinkled. And the knife. Hadn't Ellen called it his "magic" knife? How had she known? He was pretty sure he hadn't said shit about it, and they sure as hell hadn't had it last time they'd chatted up the Harvelles. And sure, maybe Ellen'd heard about it from some mutual friend, or just assumed it was magic based on the symbols carved into the blade, but Dean didn't think so. No, something about this whole situation smelled like Rufus Turner's socks, and he suddenly didn't feel so hot about the idea of Ellen going back to a disabled Bobby and a totally useless Raggedy Anne doll without him.

If he was wrong…

Well, he could come up with a million excuses for wanting to check in before making his sweep.

On the other hand, if he was right…

Fuck it. He couldn't leave a crippled, old man alone on a road that could very well be the goddamn highway to hell. Back first. Then he'd check the town.

Dean stooped to retrieve the knife from where he'd left it embedded in one of the demon's stomachs. Except it wasn't there. There was the demon. There was the bloody stab mark. But there was no knife.

And that's when Dean knew for sure that something was wrong.

He spun on his heel and sprinted from the house, making it back to the Impala just in time to watch as Ellen leveled her shotgun at Bobby's head.


	16. Chapter 16

**Hey y'all! Thank God it's summer is all I have to say. Or, I suppose I have more to say, but this is just for the guest reviewer, Gus; everyone else can go ahead and skip to the chapter start.**

_(Gus, I really wish you had an account because I wanted to respond to your review right away instead of having to wait to post this chapter. It was the longest, most thoughtful, and most touching review I have ever received (on fanfiction or in the living world), and I know that that sounds sappy, but I just wanted you to know how grateful I am that you took the time to write it. I'm thrilled that you think I've captured the characters well, and it led me to realize I've begun to stray from that in my other stories. Your review also prompted me to dedicate more time to this piece than I had been formerly, so you inadvertently helped everyone else who reads this, too. Again, thank you so much, and I hope that all your future reading and writing endeavors be fruitful. Live long! Stay strong! –The MudDog.)_

**And, without further ado, here is the chapter…**

CHAPTER 16:

Dean froze by the wheel of the dying Ford as it continued to spin in useless circles through the cooling Nebraska air. It no longer mattered that this was Ellen they were talking about, not when she could be planning to blast open Bobby's grapefruit any second, so Dean didn't hesitate to aim his gun arm directly at her chest, at the point where her black tank top swelled over her breasts.

Ellen didn't seem disturbed in the least if her next actions were anything to go by. Bobby and Anne were kneeling side by side on the asphalt in front of her like a pair of large garden gnomes, and she kneed them further apart as she called, "Come on over here, sweetie."

Dean's travel companions evidently hadn't noticed his presence before because it was only after Ellen had spoken that their heads whipped towards the overturned truck. Spying Dean beside it, Anne's face washed with relief, but Bobby continued to look as grim as an alcoholic during Prohibition. Dean might've found the contrast humorous if Ellen hadn't taken that moment to knock her captives' skulls with the hard, metal length of her barrel so they'd face front again.

"Dean, honey, I just wanna talk," she said as she squinted towards him. "Put that toy down and come on over."

Dean felt like his skin was pressing much too tight on his face as he hesitated, but he couldn't be sure he'd be able to pull the trigger faster than she could, and he couldn't be sure that it was Ellen at all and not some demonic bitch who'd high-jacked her body, so, cursing everything under the sun (mostly himself), he stooped slowly to the choppy pavement and set his shotgun down over one of the thousand gaping cracks. Then, palms held flat towards Ellen, he unbent his knees in an equally painstaking rise.

"That's a good boy," she said, low and slow, much less mocking than Dean would've expected.

One step at a time so as not to startle her into getting too trigger happy, Dean crossed the miles of ancient pavement that separated him from the trio.

He pitched his voice deep... steady... the tone that one kinda-sorta girlfriend had called "better than a massage," as he said, "I'm all ears. Whaddaya wanna talk about?"

"Sam," Ellen said, and the smile she twitched up his way was fast and metallic, nothing like the sprawling, dry expanses of her usual smiles. "I _really_ wanna talk about Sam. See, I need to find him," she went on with a quick dart of her tongue across her lips, which looked straight-up reptilian as far as Dean was concerned — Ellen the desert lizard. And then she flashed that metallic, toothy grin again, and something sour began to curl up from the back of his tongue. She was definitely possessed, but, God, for how long? "It's kinda urgent," the thing went on, "Kinda my poster boy, you know? And when I couldn't track him down myself, I figured, 'Gee, who better to help me out than the brother he carries around in his back pocket?' So," she beamed, "badabee-badabum, here we are!"

In spite of everything, Dean was oddly prickled by the implication that Sam had him tied around his little finger, and, yes, he knew that was a disgustingly childish thing to be feeling at a time like this, but he couldn't help it. It was like poison oak on his private parts, and that was pretty uncomfortable, so he figured he couldn't wholly be blamed when his voice lost a healthy portion of its diffusing quality. "You're not Ellen, are you." But he already knew.

"Ah. There you go, kid," the not-Ellen creature smirked, "Ellen, I'm sorry to say, is no longer with us." Its voice had lost the rough-cut, homey rasp, Dean now realized; there was no more squinting, and it let her colloquialisms fly away with the gray, Nebraska dust that seemed to pile up everywhere around here.

Dean's head throbbed with the acidic pang of not having caught on sooner. He ignored its implications about Ellen, which were too much to deal with right now, and instead asked, "So who are you then?" And then, immediately realizing his mistake, he jogged his eyebrows and corrected, "_What_ are you? Demon? Shape-shifter? What?"

"Ah, Dean," the thing chuckled, "I _had_ heard Sam was the sharper knife, but you disappoint. You saw my mustang, you know… and my star. And after today, well… You've at least worked out that those weren't demons, right?"

He'd been trying to avoid thinking about it. He wasn't going to think about it now, either. _Denial_, some part of him grumbled, _Yeah, A plus on that one, kid_. But Dean told that part of him to shut up and focused on the situation at hand.

"I just chose a pretty face," the thing was ragging on. (Fucking monologuer; it probably wanted them to applaud.) "Spun you a tale and watched you tick. Tick, tick, tick. That's — what — five people you killed today?" The thing wagged a finger at him as if he were a misbehaving dog. "Dean, Dean, Dean… What a shame."

But it was Bobby who growled, "You're War."

"Yahtzee for the old man!"

Dean hated that he had to ask, "What?"

"Haven't you read your Revelations?" the thing tutted. Its voice rose as if scandalized, but it was smirking. God, Dean was going to enjoy wringing its neck when he got the chance. "Rivers of blood… end of times… four horsemen?"

"Right," he said as the wet rag of understanding wiped through his mind, "so you're Douchebag Number One."

War shrugged. "If that's how you'd like to put it, yes. I _had_ heard you were the cruder brother. But, when you deal in death, I find that niceties like manners are really more or less superfluous."

"Damn, you like to hear yourself talk," Dean noted drily. "What is it you want?"

"I told you, Dean; I want you to help me find Sam."

"Well I'm sorry, but I forgot to put his collar on last night. He ran away."

"Where to?"

"No idea. What's it to you?"

War crooked his lips. "My boss really has a thing for that kid."

"Boss, huh? Thought you might be somebody's bitch."

War cocked Ellen's head with a fond purse of her oven-baked lips. "We're all somebody's bitch, Dean," it said, taking an uninvited philosophical turn. "You and John Wayne here, and Little Miss Muffet, too… You guys answer to those cloud-dwelling, winged monkeys. Sam and I just play for the other team. And, if you want to go really deep, I suppose we're all bitches to destiny." He grinned. "I'm simply filling my small role in the big plan. So—" Twitching his gun between Anne and Bobby's heads. "—we're gonna take a little road trip, kids. You don't know where Sam is, fine, but the three of you will make excellent bait. Play nice and you all live. How's that sound?"

Dean thought it sounded like cabbage cooked two times too many, and God knew cabbage was bad enough raw. Still, he didn't think he had much of a choice unless he wanted to see the hyper-active, pink cogs of Anne's brain splattered like salsa on the roadside. He wasn't willing to completely roll over either, though, so he said, "You know he left willingly, right? Not sure he's gonna come running just 'cause you dip my feet in hot water. But go ahead, buddy; give it your best shot."

"Will do," War smiled. After Dean wrung his neck, he decided he'd flay the smug expression from his stupid face. Except it was Ellen's face. God, it was so contorted he could barely tell. "Alright, team, on your feet," the horseman chopped forward, oblivious to Dean's homicidal fantasies, "It's one car from here on out — your car, I think—" He continued to grin at Dean. "—and our very own anorexia advertisement is driving. Come on, doll. Up, up, up." He prodded Anne in the back until she'd stumbled to her feet. "Dean, you take shotgun. The cripple and I will share your wonderful make-out seat in the back." War tipped his head at the scowling man on the ground and flashed teeth. "What? You don't like a bit of tongue action? Speed it up and I might let you bite."

"As you kindly pointed out," Bobby growled with his eyes squinted like cyanide tablets, "I'm a cripple, you jackass. Only thing I can speed up is my prostate cancer."

Despite the gravity of the situation, Dean couldn't stop his nose from wrinkling. "Since when do you have prostate cancer?"

Bobby briefly flicked his scowl towards his surrogate son. "Since never," he grouched. (Dean decided, not for the first time, that he would never understand some of the things Bobby said). "Now get your ass over here and help me up before this idiot shoots somebody."

"Mmm, Bobby," War said with an affectionate shake of his head, "Temper, temper."

Bobby ignored him and snapped, "Dean! Are you waiting for me to start dancing?"

Dean blinked himself back to the present and stalked even closer to the staggered threesome: Anne standing tallest, though looking paper-frail with her toothpick limbs; then War in Ellen's stocky, mountain-girl frame; and finally Bobby, twisted up like a half-baked and very bad-tempered pretzel on the asphalt.

Dean spared a moment to glare at the sun spots on War's face, barely visible over the deep tan Ellen had cultured for years, grown thick and fine like a good brand of wine, before stalking up behind Bobby and hoisting him to his feet by the armpits.

"This isn't awkward," he muttered, hoping it was low enough that only Bobby could hear.

"Oh," Bobby growled through a thick smog of sarcasm, "I'm sorry I screwed up my legs to save your ungrateful hide; remind me to leave you to the dogs next time."

Dean lugged him towards the side door with a grumbled, "What crawled up your ass?"

"I don't know... just a horseman with a shotgun who made me squat on the road for ten goddamn hours."

"It was five minutes, Bobby. Please," War broke in, leaning on the roof and smirking at the two of them like he'd just caught Tweety Bird as Dean maneuvered Bobby into place on the seat.

Neither Dean nor Bobby graced the horseman with a reply. With Bobby settled, Dean shut himself into the passenger side and shook his head at Anne's questioning gaze, her eyes stretched to size XXL. Instead he watched her hands edge uselessly along the steering wheel. Shit, it was like she'd never driven before, and Dean had to remind himself in a near continuous stream of teeth clenching that this wasn't an appropriate time to get all bent out of shape over somebody else driving the Impala. Bobby and Anne were both relying on him to get them through this, whether or not they knew it, because they were both compromised — Bobby by age and injury; Anne by inexperience.

Unfortunately, Dean himself felt about as useful as Christian Dior on a skunk. He probably should've called his personal, cloud-dwelling, winged monkey back when he had the chance, but too late now, and there was no use crying over spilt milk. What a lousy day.

If Anne could've read Dean's thoughts, she would've been in complete agreement as the car bucked to life beneath her and then lurched out onto the road. She didn't believe in demons. No, she did not. But there was a thing in the backseat and it wasn't a human, and Ah! She could see it the rearview mirror!

The car swerved.

"Hey, watch it!" Dean barked, and the muscles along her spine jumped to attention. He was holding an arm across his door as if to shield it, back arched into the seat like a hissing cat. _Like a hissing cat_… She'd have to remember that for her book… Except, no, now was so, totally not the time to be thinking about that. She shook her head to clear it, and the car took her momentary distraction as an opportunity to try and win back the reins. It swerved again.

This earned her another scalded snap of: "Hey!"

"I'm sorry. Sorry," Anne said uselessly. "I just… I don't… I don't really drive."

This didn't seem to do anything to calm Dean down, but it did make the creepy thing in the backseat laugh, which in turn caused the car to swerve again.

It was thirty, very tense minutes later when the upbeat ringtone of Anne's phone cut through the woolen silence that had wrapped up each of the car's occupants in a private, itchy cocoon.

_All the single ladies!_

_All the—_

Anne blushed something ferocious as she nearly dropped the wheel to dig it from her pocket. The little blue screen was announcing the caller ID in cheerful, digitalized letters, and Anne swallowed. It was her parents. Anne's whole world had just turned into a pig and sprouted wings and now she had to talk to her parents.

"Oh, now we have service," Dean grumbled, knitting his arms together as he slammed himself further back against the seat. They hadn't had it back when Chuck was gonna warn them about all this impending doom, but _now_ of course they had it.

Anne stared at the phone in her hand like she'd never seen one before, like she'd popped straight out of the Massachusetts Bay Colony with the humorless attitude and driving ability to match.

"Are you going to answer that?" the creature in the woman's body asked from over her shoulder, and Anne nearly had an aneurysm as she slammed on the brakes.

The seatbelt gave Dean a hard smack across the chest, and he grunted, "Son of a bitch," as the air was shoved out of his lungs. Geez, what had he ever done to it?

Anne's finger was avoiding the "talk" button like they were south poles on two magnets she was trying to force together, but she eventually muscled it into cooperation.

"Hello?" she said.

It felt quite awkward to be the only one speaking in a car full of silent men, and a squeaky toy seemed to have crawled into her throat, so she couldn't blame her mother for the uncertainty in her tone when she said, "Anne? Hello, it's Mom."

Anne choked down the squeaky toy. "Hey, Mom. I'm really sorry about this weekend." She assumed that's why her mom was calling. "But I'm basically halfway across the country right now."

"Yes, Nigel was saying something about that. We just wanted to know: where exactly are you?"

"Nebraska," Anne said. That was a question she could answer. "Uh… southern Nebraska."

"And _how_ are you?"

Anne glanced over at Dean's contracted face, the blood soaking through his jeans that he hadn't seemed to notice yet but Anne found herself glancing at every thirty seconds like clockwork, some morbid fascination. She peered back between the front seats at the woman/man/demonic, god-knew-what creature that she still expected to disappear every time she blinked and the grouchy, partially paralyzed man who'd decided to take a hermitage in his baseball cap ever since they'd left his truck behind. She was driving the vehicle of her own kidnapping on a mission to act as bait for the guy who might've started the apocalypse. She was— "Fine. How are you?"

"I'm fine. Dad's fine, too. We'll be okay this weekend without you, I think. But, Anne, I… Nigel made us a bit nervous. What exactly are you doing in Nebraska?"

Anne considered the many possible ways to answer this question and decided that simplest was best. "I'm, um… in a car right now. With three friends. We're… just kind of driving."

"You don't have a destination?"

Before Anne could answer, the creepy creature cut in. "We're going to them."

Anne dropped the phone, but it was Dean and Bobby who demanded, "What?" in equally scandalized tones as they spun to glare at the thing.

Anne stared rather than glared. Her eyes ached from bugging so much. "What?" she echoed weakly as her mother's voice bubbled up from the floor, rendered incoherent by the distance and the blood fluttering behind Anne's eardrums.

"I think dropping in on mom and pops this weekend is an excellent plan," the thing grinned at them all. It had leaned back in the seat and rested an arm smugly on the sill of the back window.

"Don't touch that," Dean snapped as it began to fiddle with the lock mechanism.

The thing ignored him. "We'll throw a cocktail party," it went on with its sticky grin, and its eyebrows popped playfully as it added, "invite Sam maybe. I always say the more hostages the merrier. Am I right, Annie girl? Let's turn this rust bucket around."

"Hold on, Anne," Dean commanded, shoving a flattened palm into her face as he maneuvered in the seat to loom over the shoulder rest. It was a better position to menace people in, and he glared at the creature, jaw thrust out in the gravel-crunching expression Anne was becoming quite familiar with. "Nobody's going anywhere," he scowled. "You wanted Sam, not some civilians eating through their social security checks."

"I'm getting Sam," the thing insisted, "My way. And if you don't play nice, Dean, we can always turn Little Annie here into Little _Orphan_ Annie." The thing turned its flashing teeth back on Anne. "How does that sound, Annie? Not good? You're right; it's not. So why don't you get back on the phone and tell Mom you're coming home this weekend after all."

...

They crossed the Tennessee state line fifteen hours later. It was the most uncomfortable car ride of Dean's life, and, having spent roughly half his life in a car, Dean had a lot to choose from. Anne's driving was giving him seasickness (not to mention a nervous tic), and Bobby hadn't produced a single sentence longer than three words. Then, of course, War was there smirking creepily at them all from his nest pressed against the back door, so Dean figured this one took the cake. Not even driving Stacey Malek's mom to the drugstore to buy a pregnancy test had been this frickin' uncomfortable. Although, maybe that was just because he didn't have the actual driving aspect to distract him this time; all he could do was glare at the passing signs and fields and try to beat a good idea out of his brain, which wasn't really stepping up to the plate. It felt sore and dry and had been shooting the inside of his skull resentful looks that demanded, "What do you want from me?" since hour five. Really, Dean just wanted to sleep. He wanted to forget about the contorted face in the backseat that he could no longer see as Ellen's and the five people back in Edison who hadn't been possessed and his bitch of a little brother and, come to think of it, the whole fucking apocalypse.

Except now the Impala was grumbling to an uneven stop by the curb of a neat, residential street where all the trees were spaced exactly twenty feet apart and the lawns were trimmed to a uniform three inches, and Dean realized that, unless War decided to knock him out, he probably wasn't going to be able to sleep for a while yet.


	17. Chapter 17

**Hey y'all. So sorry for all these author's notes, but I wanted to say, "Yay! We're finally back to Sam!" Also, I'm pretty sure I totally lost track of whatever careful timeline I had going, so I'm just gonna tell you that this chapter is supposed to begin on the morning of the day when War kidnaps Dean and Anne and Bobby, meaning that they haven't met War yet where this is starting, but they will later this same day. Also, posting is already super slow... I know... I'm sorry... but it might get even slower for a month or two coming up (August, September-ish) because I am picking up and pretty much moving across the whole darn country. Exciting! Scary! I've basically never left my hometown and now I'm gonna be over a thousand miles away, so wish me luck! (P.S. I only updated the last chapter to fix small errors, so ignore that.) Anyway, thank y'all so much for sticking with, and I think I've finally worked out a real game plan for a good chunk of this story, so huzzah for that. Hope you enjoy the chapter!**

* * *

CHAPTER 17:

Sam woke up with a crick in his neck, something like sand on his tongue, a hundred stewing bruises everywhere else, and a weird sensation in his stomach that he really hoped was nothing more sinister than good, old-fashioned hunger. Plus, it felt like some bastard had rammed a stake between two of his lower vertebrae, and he was still dressed in Alexa's boyfriend's clothes. _Ex_-boyfriend (he had to remember that), and they were damp from old sweat, too tight, and overall pretty gross. They needed a motel room tonight. No question. Genetics hadn't done him any favors when it came to sleeping in cars, and definitely not little cars, even when he got the adjustable driver's seat. Anyway, there was gonna be an APB on the crappy, little Honda soon (that is, if there wasn't one already), so a new car (a larger one) was definitely on today's agenda.

He rolled his neck out, scrunched his eyelids tighter together, and then forced them open to face the dull interior of the kidnapped vehicle, the tree-tinted light beyond. They were in the real forest now, somewhere between Big Trees and Bear Valley, off of Highway 4 on a dirt side road that was probably private property if the thousand or so "NO TRESPASSING!" signs were anything to go by. Sam felt a bit guilty about that, but he figured he'd already added enough footnotes and exceptions to his moral guidelines that one more offense could hardly be the tipping point. If he was being honest with himself, the tipping point had probably come and gone a while back: when he'd freed Lucifer for instance, or maybe months before that when he'd slept with Ruby. He doubted there were many church congregations out there still praying for his redemption.

On the bright side, his moral lapses of the previous night had paid off… In cash… About three grand in cash. One for Alexa. One for him. One for Gavin, and that really meant two for him because Gavin wasn't gonna be touching a single penny. (Sam had no idea what demons liked to blow their money on, but he didn't think today was a good day to start the experiment.)

So two grand it was. Two grand was nice, but it wasn't enough to feel secure, and Sam found himself nostalgically contemplating the credit card scams he and Dean used to pull. Except Dean would be looking for that; he couldn't risk doing anything traceable anymore.

"Penny for your thoughts?" a smug voice chopped into his mental stream.

For the second time in two days, Sam kinked his neck turning to scowl at the demon. Stupid.

Gavin's dark eyes quirked into squints at the irritated expression on Sam's face. "Let's make that half a penny," he drawled as he drummed his fingers against the shoulder of Sam's seat, "You don't look like you'll be producing thoughts of value for another couple hours."

"Do you ever shut up?" Sam grumbled, resuming his ineffectual attempt to roll the knots out of his spine.

Gavin's nose wrinkled. "Excuse me for trying to have a conversation. I mean, dude, we're starting a long-term relationship here. Any psychologist will tell you that communication is essential to every healthy friendship."

"It's gonna be pretty short-term if you don't cut the crap, Gavin." He glanced over to make sure Alexa was still asleep before adding, "There are a lot of demons out there to choose from, so our 'relationship' only lasts as long as I decide it does."

The demon's hand, which had been tapping on the driver's seat, jumped up like an exuberant, leaping spider to pat Sam's shoulder. Sam shrugged it off with a scowl as Gavin said, "Oh, come off it; you love me. I mean, let's look at the facts here. I haven't tried to kill you. I found us this lovely lady." He waved a skinny hand in Alexa's direction and graced her sleeping figure with a slippery grin. "I targeted our hits at the bars, and, if you haven't noticed, dude, we're up three grand because of it. So give me a little credit and spill. What's got you looking like a prune that lost its mama?"

"Two grand," Sam corrected in a growl, "The other's Alexa's. And I look nothing like a prune." He twisted the whole top of his torso to face the demon and crossed his arms over the seatback before continuing. "Look," he said, "The cash is nice, but since this, as you just pointed out, is kind of a long-term thing, I'd really rather have plastic. Problem is—" He gave Gavin his most artificial smile. "—I can't run my scams anymore without alerting the hunting community, and that's something I'd really rather not do."

Gavin shrugged. "So use Alexa," he said as if it were algebra one and they were being asked to find the value of x. "I mean, nobody'll be looking for scammers with a woman's name, right? 'Cause there's no fucking way you could pass as a chick."

"We can't use Alexa," Sam protested.

"Why not?"

"She's not supposed to be part of this! You didn't ask me before bringing her in, and I'm telling you now that she can't stay."

Gavin held up his hands. "Okay, chill," he said, black eyebrows lowering as he pouted. "It's just a suggestion… an awesome suggestion, but if you want to continue your long history of being an idiot, who am I to stop you? I mean, I'm just a lowly, reformed demon; nobody mind me."

"There's a difference between being stupid and being concerned for other people's safety," Sam snapped at him, "And you didn't explain to her what joining our little team would mean, did you?"

Gavin shrugged, mouth twitching in a way that revealed the tiniest hint of sheepishness. "What's a lie or two between friends?" he tried. "We can be legendary, Sam. Three amigos. Gavin, Alexa, and Sam." He swiped his hand before him as if painting a picture in the air. "Battling Hell's armies together. Come on, dude; you know it sounds good."

"It sounds delusional," Sam snorted, "and the girl's not gonna be a part of it."

"Woman," broke in Alexa's deep, smoke-chaffed voice.

Gavin and Sam both snapped their heads to the side to find her arching her back out of the passenger's seat with an un-lady-like yawn.

"Fuck," she said, the morning bitterness dry in her mouth, "It smells like shit in here." She shoved her door open to breathe in the much fresher, mountain air hanging outside and swept her flat gaze around the colorful array of "NO TRESPASSING!" signs. There was one nailed to every fourth trunk, and their angry glares cut a sharp contrast to the soft morning sunlight.

"Sorry," Sam said, unsure whether he was apologizing for calling her a girl, or for excluding her from their group, or for the smell. The last wasn't entirely his fault, but Alexa had a way of making him perpetually feel like the guilty party.

Gavin smirked at him before spinning quickly towards the Latina and saying, "Hey, Alexa, we have a proposition for you."

"What?" Sam demanded. His stare instantly snapped back to the demon, but he was cut off by Alexa herself, who'd turned her upper body into the car's center with suspicious black eyes.

Her mouth was tight and unwavering. "Yeah?" she said, "And what's that?"

"Nothing," Sam said, glaring daggers at Gavin, "There's no proposition. We—"

"—want you to stick around for the long haul," the demon spoke over him. "Share in the guts and the glory. Sam thinks you might be a big winner with his credit card scams."

"I—"

"Credit card scams," Alexa repeated, cutting him off for the second time as one black eyebrow arched up to hover between skepticism and scorn. "You guys fuck with the heavy stuff?"

"Me?" Gavin said, splaying a hand across his chest in mock surprise, "Certainly not. I'm a model citizen, but Mr. Winchester here is another story. He likes to live on the edge. Don't you, Sam?"

Sam scowled out the windshield, refusing to look at the demon or the woman. "Look," Sam said, "No offense, Alexa, I don't know if you wanna stick around or not, but I can't let that happen."

"What? I'm too much of a good girl to use fake plastic?"

"No..." Sam shook his head. "Yes." He tried to rub away the deepening creases in his forehead. "Look, that's not what this is about. I mean, yeah, there's jail, but it's more than that, and I'm sorry I can't explain it to you, but I really think it's best we take you back to Angels Camp before heading out of state."

He was still looking forward, but the obsidian arrowheads of Alexa's glare were quite tangible as they stabbed into his cheekbone. His earlier glimpse had revealed that her makeup had smeared and faded since last night, and her hair had snarled against the headrest. In the charcoal-colored tank top and hip-hugging jeans, she looked like a hooker going through withdrawal. The scary kind. Sam swallowed and forced himself to turn towards her. "You good with that?"

"No," she said coolly. "You're going to Nevada? Least you can do is drop me in Vegas."

"Vegas?" Gavin, who'd been watching their exchange with a frighteningly intense silence, suddenly popped back in. "That's way south. Don't get me wrong, though; I'm totally down." His gaze flicked to Sam's stiff profile. "And if _some_one would just give in to a bit of magical help, we could clean up at craps."

"No," Sam said curtly without turning to look at the demon.

"Dude, come on," Gavin sighed, "If you don't want the girl—"

"Woman."

He nodded to Alexa with a slight roll of his eyes. "—woman, then we're going to have to live on cash. May I also point out that you don't have much of a leg to stand on when it comes to ethics? Stolen clothes. Stolen car. Stolen money… All those other things that you're not keen on sharing with our resident female at the moment."

Sam blocked out most of what he'd said and grumbled, "That reminds me: we need a new vehicle. There's probably an APB for this one by now, and we can't cross the border if that's the case." He focused on Alexa's accusatory stare and swallowed again. "Alexa," he began, feeling the guilt resume its steady IV drip into his intestinal tract, "I'll take you to Vegas if that's what you really want, but I'm warning you that every hour you spend with us is a risk. There are a lot of not-so-nice people looking for Gavin and me, and they won't believe you if you say you're not a part of our crap."

"_Your_ crap," Gavin humphed from the backseat.

"You wanna elaborate on that?" Alexa prompted. Her mouth and forehead had twisted in a frightening way that, on a man, probably would've looked like a gargoyle. "Talk about vague."

Sam blushed. "Sorry," he mumbled, "but, uh… I can't really say more."

Gavin and Alexa both snorted. "Fine," she said, all cold business again. "I'm in. You want a car, though, we gotta head back to Murphys. It's the tourist town around here, so there'll be a better set o' options, and they got good food, too." She gave Sam a very dark, very pointed look. "You're buying."

"Alright," Sam said, still a bit flustered. "Murphys it is."

…

They ended up on the edge of town, sitting at one of the picnic tables that made up a cozy cluster by the shallow river (more like a stream really) which flowed under the commercial blocks. Just a couple yards away, the road crossed the river in a low bridge, and while the side with the tables was trimmed and civilized, reeds and bushes sprouted directly on the road's other flank, bowing over the river like green monks as it led out into the wilderness. The picnic area where the three travelers sat was shaded by tall, straight-trunked trees, and Sam shivered in his sweater. No extra shade was necessary in November, even with the sun up. Alexa insisted the park got busy later in the day with kids and their families, but at 9:00 in the morning it was basically empty, and so Sam got to eat his eggs in peace. Relative peace, anyway. He'd eaten about half the stuff in his takeout box when he realized he was just as starving as when he'd swallowed the first bite, and he had a sinking suspicion that the feeling wouldn't go away even if he snatched Gavin's and Alexa's containers and downed those, too. The hunger was bone deep and itchy, and right now it was manageable, but in a day or two it wouldn't be.

Sam found himself spending less time worrying about the persistent cold or the APB on the car, less time looking at the scenery, and more time looking at Gavin's wrists, the old bandage peeking out every few seconds as the demon manipulated his fork.

"What's up with you?" Alexa demanded after a few moments of this, and Sam snapped his eyes up to block the suspicious daggers of her stare.

He was about to insist that nothing was 'up with him' when he realized that that would be counterproductive. He didn't need to lie; he could fix this right here right now. "I need to talk to Gavin," he said instead, standing up from the bench in a quick, jarring movement and dropping his plastic fork in the yellow remains of the eggs. He jerked his head towards the bridge.

"What? Right now?" Gavin demanded, giving his pancakes a longing look.

"Yes, right now," Sam scowled, suddenly certain that this really couldn't wait. "Get up."

Gavin scowled right back but stood without further complaint and followed Sam over the bridge and down into the secluded area of the veterans memorial on the other side of the river. They didn't talk as they walked. Gavin was sulking. Sam was riled up and he could feel Alexa watching them, her eyes black and unblinking until they'd passed out of sight down the slope of the bank and around the low wall of the memorial.

Sam stopped Gavin there, made sure the parking lot was empty, and then tugged the knife out of his pants pocket. It came loose with a deceptively unthreatening rumple of cloth.

Gavin, however, felt threatened. "Dude," he protested, backing up, eyes fixed on the short, claw-like blade. "Give a guy a warning!"

"Fine. You're warned."

Gavin scowled, but when he said, "Do we have to?" it came out as a whine.

Sam rolled his eyes. "Don't be a baby. It's one little cut."

"It hurts," Gavin pouted.

Sam wasn't about to waste time arguing; he focused his mind and locked the demon in place. Then he reached over, grabbed the skinny, un-bandaged, left arm, and made the cut.

He wrinkled his nose as he realized what he was gonna have to do. "I don't wanna get my hands dirty," he explained with an embarrassed shrug before pulling the cut up to his mouth and sucking the blood directly from it.

"Oh, dude, gross," Gavin muttered, but he was watching in fascination as Sam gripped his arm steadily in place with both hands, one on either side of the cut like Gavin had used to hold corncobs back in his domestic phase. His skin was tender there. The sensation was hot and wet, ticklish and thrilling, empowering in the way that only dirty and forbidden things could be. He had really missed being a demon.

_You disgust me_, Nikhil murmured in his mind, but Gavin merely smirked at him. He could tell the kid was equally absorbed in the pure taboo-ness of what they were doing. Even for the innocent soul, there was always something delicious about the macabre.

"What the fuck?"

They both jumped.

Sam dropped Gavin's arm and spun, a tiny trail of blood running over the side of his bottom lip like a kid who'd stuffed too many berries into his mouth at once.

Alexa was staring at the two of them from around the memorial wall with her already crooked nose twisted further in what might've been horror but was probably closer to disbelief. "The hell are you two doing?"


	18. Chapter 18

**Author's Note:** _Aigh, it's been months, I know. Forgive me. I'm still writing it, though, and I still have some sort of plan for the next couple chapters, but it's going to be slow going. Nothing new there. College has changed my life style, and I just can't spend as much time writing anymore. Which is sad but also great because college is great! Anyway, I've also fixed a few grammar type things in some of the earlier chapters, though not all of them, so if you want to go back and ooh and aww over my marginally improved sentence structure, there's that. If not, then here's the next chapter! Hope you enjoy!_

* * *

CHAPTER 18:

Alexa had a thing about being ditched. She did the ditching; people didn't ditch her, and especially not people like Sam and Gavin who she didn't trust to walk ten feet in a straight line without supervision. She'd allowed them a generous three minutes, finishing her food and then tapping her fingers against the wobbly boards of the tabletop, listening to the creak of bad nails and the suspicious gossip of the wind through the dying tree limbs; she'd glanced over her shoulder at the sad excuse for a bridge, considered waiting another minute, but then decided: fuck it. Snapping the Styrofoam, take-out container shut, she swung her ass off the bench and stalked up to the road, across it, down the short path on the other side. There was too much ratty nature stuff for Alexa's taste, but she just crinkled her nose and dealt with it like a woman proficient in the art of disapproval. She'd had a lot of practice, and blackberries, reeds and spider webs were a bit less disgusting than where she'd lived with that pendejo back in Angels Camp. Still… gross.

She swiped her hips around the brick wall with a scowl set firmly in place, ready to snap at them to hurry the fuck up before somebody noticed that crappy Honda they'd jacked, but the scene splashed across the neatly cropped grass of the memorial stopped her with a slap upside the head.

Alexa, just like the red-blooded Boy Scout she wasn't, came prepared for everything, and so it wasn't so much shock as complete lack of comprehension that had her nose dehydrating to a raisin as she stared. And, lips jerked open by some invisible force, she smacked out, "What the fuck?"

Sam's hands stood out starkly against the brown of Gavin's forearm, and between left and right was Sam's mouth, suctioned to the skin like a giant, terrestrial octopus. There was a tiny trail of dark liquid catching in Gavin's fine arm hairs as it dribbled in the direction gravity had assigned it, mirrored by a similar colored smudge across Sam's upper lip. It looked like cheap cherry lip gloss. But Alexa knew what it was, that if she kissed Sam now, it would taste like hot rust instead of hyper-sweetened fruit.

Her voice like some sort of nuclear trigger, Sam shoved himself back, causing Gavin to stumble and scowl and poke resentfully at the blood- and saliva-slicked gash in his skin.

While her primary emotion was fuck-all confounded, followed by relief (because they hadn't left her stranded in the foothills as she'd half expected), Alexa also found herself a bit disappointed that they hadn't carried on. There'd been a dark appeal to watching the proceedings, like a drop-in at a satanic ritual ("Don't mind me, Jim, just here for the disembowelment"), and the power in the air was almost palpable, drawing her eyes to Sam's mouth and the blood, to the onyx of Gavin's eyes, which seemed a bit too black for the morning hour, though she couldn't put her finger on why. Around them, the world dimmed and blurred, and the sunny patch of grass at their feet seemed to glow a darker, more vibrant green than the rest.

But mostly, yes, she was just fuck-all confounded. Feeling that she had to say something, she followed herself up with a perfunctory, "The hell are you two doing? 'Cause that's some pretty kinky shit right there."

Neither of them responded.

"You gay or something?"

"What?" Gavin protested, "No!"

"I pass no judgment," Alexa said with a wry arch to her brows, and she was aiming it more towards the sweep of Sam's wrist across his mouth, towards the dusty red stain he'd just painted on his jacket cuff, than towards Gavin. "All God's children, yeah?"

"Well…" Gavin said with a sheepish squint to his too-dark eyes.

Sam straightened then, jerking the reins of Alexa's fascination to their full, sick tautness as he rolled out his neck without the usual jerkiness. No awkward slouch. Unlike the weird guy Alexa had been getting used to over the past twenty-four hours, Sam's present gaze hooked onto hers hard, and his pupils, dilated like a druggie's, scorched tracks through the frigid, Murphys-morning air between them.

The other-worldly darkness was back, and it lit an excited fire across the surface of her skull. Chills wriggled down her arms like electric eels, and Alexa caught the muscles around her mouth contorting into a half-bared smile.

She wiped it away just as Sam said, "Not really," in a voice lower and steadier than the one she'd heard back at the picnic tables.

Gavin's eyes darted Sam's way as he continued to hunch over his wounded arm, and Alexa wasn't quite sure how to interpret the sharp flash of his expression, save that it was shot through with the seeds of suspicion. Then it disappeared, replaced by his customary scowl, and he said, "Can we do this later? I'm kinda bleeding here."

Alexa roped back the sinisterly reaching corners of her mind and refocused her attention on the present fucked-up-ness of the situation. She twined her arms over her chest as if to lock herself into place, present a firmer barrier. "No," she said, matching Gavin's scowl with the claws in her voice. "We're gonna do this now. What the hell's goin' on with you two? What shit are you involved in that's worse than the law? Drug smuggling? Some fucking cult? 'Cause we're not going anywhere 'til you fill me in."

She'd never been entirely sure why people listened to her, but she knew there was something dragon-like about the way she glared, something a little bit manic, and that it got people to do what she wanted. So she was more pleased than surprised when, rather than laugh in her face, Gavin shrugged and said, "Cult sounds about right. Now my arm…"

"Oh, shut up," Sam growled over his shoulder, "It's one tiny cut. You'll live."

Alexa's eyebrows dropped to a crouch. "Hey, pendejos!" she snapped, "Paint me the fucking picture or I'm calling the cops."

Alexa had no intention of calling anybody, but she knew the hard "k" sounded threatening when she spit it out like that, and, for whatever reason, people listened to her.

Gavin was tired; he really just wanted Sam to get the bandaging out and fix his oozing arm and then get his whole plan moving forward again, so he shot Sam one final glare and told Alexa, "It's exactly what it looks like. Sam was drinking my blood because I'm a demon, and that's, like, his juice of life or something. It's the apocalypse. We're trying to find a way around that, but Sam here's the one who kicked off the whole fucking enchilada, so there are a lot of hunters and demons and, worst of all, relatives out there who wanna find him. We'd rather not deal with any of that, so here we are on our sweet little lonesome." Gavin shot an irritated scowl at Sam's sweater-clad back before flicking his eyes towards the girl, whose eyebrows hadn't budged an inch. "That's the whole picture."

There was a moment of silence.

"You guys are fuckin' insane."

She said it with a scornful twist to her lip, but she hadn't backed up, and she didn't look scared.

Sam snorted, but there was a wistful undercurrent to the gruff petulance when he said, "If I had a nickel for every time somebody'd told me that…"

"Maybe they're on the right track, amigo."

Sam just shrugged, expression unreadable, and let it drop. "So," he said instead, "given that we might be insane, and that, if we're not, you're gonna have hell's finest on your ass... d'you still want that ride to Vegas?"

Alexa hesitated.

"My advice is you stick it out here," Sam put in, "but with the cards on the table, it's your choice. Come or stay; I don't care."

"What?" Gavin protested, gaping at the back of Sam's neck where the hair curled out. "Dude, you're joking! This is our opportunity! You wouldn't take her this morning 'cause she didn't know what she was getting into. Well, now she knows! We can prove it! And then, if she's game, we can actually get this show on the road!"

Ignoring Alexa's sharp, "Hey, I'm right here!" Sam spun on the demon and growled, hopefully too low for Alexa to hear, "Gavin, shut up. We can't keep her on. She's gonna be a liability when things heat up."

But Gavin was already shaking his head.

"Uh-uh, dude. You don't get it," he said with eyes wide and spiked in disbelief over Sam's evident stupidity. "She _saw_ us. What do you think is gonna happen if your brother or a demon comes through here and digs around a bit?" He could see the first layer of doubt settle over Sam's eyes, but his jaw was still hard and set. "You think they're going to overlook her somehow? We hit five bars last night, and all three of us were seen together at all of them, so do you really think there's any way a dedicated searcher won't dig her up if we leave her here, or, fuck, even in Vegas? And do you know what that means? That means we either take her with us, or we leave her in the type of condition where she can't say shit to help them find us."

Sam's stare was cold. Mistrustful. But, after a heartbeat, he extended his hand in a sharp thrust and Gavin found himself choking on his own tarry essence, which he supposed was the hunter equivalent of a handshake. If it hadn't hurt so much, he might've rolled his eyes.

The sick fascination that Alexa had shoved down resurfaced as she watched. The Indian boy clutched at his throat and a dark, smoky something rose out of his gaping mouth. Sam was doing it. That much was clear to her. His hand and arm taut and tensed, almost claw-like, and his eyes were thin and unblinking as if hypnotizing a snake.

"That," Sam growled, like it took him effort to speak while doing whatever the hell he was doing, "is what a demon looks like… when it's not in its meat suit." And, even though his eyes remained fixed on Gavin, Alexa knew his rough-edged words were aimed at her.

She stared, face unchanged, as the black fog tumbled over itself, extending about a foot out of Gavin's contracting, spluttering throat like some hellish tongue before Sam let it go and it slunk quickly back into the safety of the boy's mouth.

"Ouch," Gavin croaked. "Fuck. Warn me next time." Then he doubled over and began to cough.

Sam rolled his eyes with another, "You'll live," before turning back to Alexa. "So," he said, crisp and business-like as if he really had become a lawyer, "Do you wanna come with us or not?"

Alexa hadn't wanted anything as much in a long time; she could taste the aftershock of power zinging through the air, and she craved it with an ardor even she knew had to be broken. She wanted it with an addict's blind need, power hungry like some asshole dictator in a third world country, and she couldn't be more disgusted with herself and she couldn't care less. All that flashed through the darker roads of her mind, hidden behind a shrug. "The shrimp said it earlier," she said with precise indifference, "I've hustled; I've stolen clothes; I'm planning on being an accessory to auto theft and credit card fraud, so joining Hell's rejects? Why not? I say, 'Fuck it. Let's make this shit official.'"

Sam shrugged back with a half roll of his eyes. "Why not," he mumbled, and he wasn't entirely sure if he'd meant it to be sarcastic or not. He turned to haul Gavin unceremoniously to his feet.

"Shit, I don't feel good," the demon said, "Think I lost too much blood."

"No you didn't," Sam glare-frowned, "We just need to get a car and get out of here and you can rest up in the backseat if you're still feeling off your game." With a firm whack to Gavin's back, he began to walk towards the road.

"Hold up," Alexa cut in, "Where exactly are we headed? And just what the hell are we trying to accomplish anyway?"

Sam paused and he and Gavin exchanged looks. "Uh… Well, it's the apocalypse. In case you missed that part," Sam said at last, turning back to Alexa with his nose scrunched on one side in an awkward apology, "so the general goal is to, you know, stop it."

Gavin took Sam's silence and the frustrated roll of Alexa's eyes as his cue to jump in. "Which I think we should do by rounding up—"

"What you think doesn't matter," Sam cut him off.

"You're not even gonna hear what I have to say?" Gavin whined. "I'm wounded."

He clenched a hand to his chest with the overblown gestures of Othello or Hamlet, and Sam couldn't tell if, beneath the melodrama, lurked a pool of real frustration. Probably. But it didn't prevent him from saying, "No," in easy-breezy indifference. "We're following my plan."

"Since when do you have a plan? I thought long-term goals were too mainstream for you. You seem more like an action guy." He turned to Alexa. "Doesn't he seem more like an action guy?"

Alexa glared at both of them.

Sam hadn't really had a defined plan, but he wasn't going to tell Gavin that, and he could put one together now. He'd always been decently good at thinking on the fly. Better than Dean anyway. "My plan," he growled, glaring at Gavin's head, "is to stay off everybody's radar. We'll weaken the opposition behind the scenes and help my brother by taking out the demons that get in his way."

"Sam, I like the way you're thinking—" Gavin clapped a hand to his shoulder, hard enough to sting. Sam didn't give him the satisfaction of seeing him wince. "—but I don't think you've really got it in you to be the Plan Man. For instance, your plan would make some sense if you were with your brother, but…"

"Dean doesn't like my methods," Sam said, "And, fine, he doesn't have to, but I'm not going to let that stop me either. I might be less help than I'd be by his side if he let me do things my way, but I can still get information a helluva lot quicker like this. So we're gonna hunt down as many hell bitches as we can, interrogate them to figure out where Satan's holing up, and then I'll pass that on to Dean. That's the plan." Sam thought it sounded pretty solid, and he was just a little bit proud of himself for thinking it up so fast.

Gavin didn't share the sentiment. His face was scrunched up tight, and he managed to hold off for only about a second before blurting out, "Mine's better."

"Don't wanna hear it."

"Dios mio, you're both idiots," Alexa interrupted. The words came out in a whip-like sigh, snapping both their heads towards her. "Sam, hear him out. And Gavin, the next time you PMS, I'm gonna stab you in the leg, yeah?"

"We don't have time now," Sam protested, voice clipped as he tried to recover from his childish lapse. "Let's just get the car, and then, yes, I'll listen to what Gavin has to say, okay? Can everyone get on board with that?"

"Not the car part," Gavin said, "I still feel light-headed. You really have to be more careful next time; I lost too much blood."

Sam sighed. "You did not," he said as he dragged a tense hand back from his widow's peak. "It's seeing the blood that's got you all woozy, and that's real cute: a demon who can't handle blood." His hand dropped, and he surveyed Gavin with a disappointed head shake. "Fine. You stay here. Alexa and I will go." He glanced at her with a quick apology for announcing this without getting her permission, but she just waved it off with an infinitesimal tightening of her lids. "Be here when we get back."

"I will," Gavin sulked.

He kept the pout in place until they'd properly disappeared down the road, and then he let loose the self-satisfied smirk he'd been holding back and skipped towards the bathrooms.

He'd visited earlier. The portly matron at the breakfast place had directed him with a smile. She'd missed the way Sam had sighed and Alexa'd rolled her eyes, but Gavin had not. He'd sauntered out of the shop while they'd waited for their orders and made a quick but messy detour along a side road. Then he'd snuck down to the public restrooms in the park, where he'd stashed his newfound gold in the pipework under a sink, before jaunting back up to rendezvous with his two new amigos.

Now, locking the door on the men's side, he knelt down to retrieve his booty. The liquid sloshed as he jerked it free, leaving pinkish stains up the sides of the paper coffee cup.

"Can't handle blood, my ass," Gavin smirked as he drank in the sensual odor of death and salt. Ah, delicious as always. He swirled it once again just to watch the reflection of the skylight dance, and then he started to chant.

"Is that you, fuckup?" a familiar voice simpered out from the pop of a particularly large blood bubble. It left small flecks of ruby clutching at the cup's sides, and Gavin couldn't help but smile fondly down at them.

"Denice," he greeted, the tiniest bit smug, "You've been waiting for me to call, haven't you?"

"Don't flatter yourself," she purred with another slick slop of a blood bubble, "or I'll eat you next time we meet. Now why'd you ring? I don't have time to waste."

Gavin could detect an empty power-play when he heard one, but he didn't mind. While Denice was probably cozied up in one of Hell's danker, subterranean offices, whiling away the hours with a paring knife or a good book, Gavin was stuck in a rather uncomfortable squat in a public toilet, and, with Sam and Alexa due back in less than twenty minutes, _he_ really _didn't_ have time to waste. "It's about the Sam Winchester situation," he explained, rising to his feet with a wince in an attempt to spare Nikhil's knobby kneecaps, "He's stubborn." Satan, was he ever. "And while I think I can get him to come 'round, I'd like to know how much time's left on the clock."

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about," Denice trilled, "You'll have to give me a bit more."

"Alright," Gavin told the cup, disguising his irritation, "The ultimate goal is to get Sam on the throne, right? Me as his loyal advisor. You, too, of course," he added quickly, "and that means we need to start building a coalition among the demons."

"An army," Denice paraphrased.

"Well, army's a bit strong," Gavin edged. "We don't want to scare off potential sympathizers. Just… an alternative to Lucifer. I know you're not the only one who'd rather be working for a different cause."

"I'm not," Denice agreed coolly, "but you'd be real stupid to put your money on the majority flipping sides. Even you, fuckup, have gotta realize that Lucifer's scare tactics are gonna keep most of even the doubty-est doubters in line. Who you want to be preaching at are the neutral fuckers."

Gavin hesitated. He swiped his tongue over Nikhil's front teeth, noting the grooves between them as he considered his options. "What are the numbers like?"

A tinny noised clanged through their connection. Denice clucking her tongue probably. "Not in your favor," she acknowledged dryly. "Maybe a couple thousand neutral. Ten thousand backing Lucifer, but only a few hundred devoted followers amongst those." Her tone darkened as she said, "Goddamn zealots," before it returned to her usual jelly-smooth rasp. "Better hurry. Nobody wants to get caught in the middle, so more join up every day. There's the promise of torture and death if they don't. You and Sammy Winchy better start promising protection real soon if you want any sort of sizable following."

"That's what I was worried about," Gavin grumbled. "Thanks, Denice. 'S'all I needed."

"Don't forget to loop me in," Denice purred as Gavin began to move the cup towards the sink. "Screw me and you swing."

"I know, I know," Gavin said with a roll of his eyes. "Lovely chat as always. Now goodbye," and he dumped the blood down the drain before she could respond.

It left a rose-petal tinge on the white ceramic, and Gavin swirled his pinky through it for a moment before twisting the tap and letting the water wash it away. Bye-bye blood.

He sighed, frowned at the still un-bandaged slit on his forearm, poked at it a bit, and then trotted out of the restroom to return to the memorial where, hopefully, he could skulk and plot for a few minutes before Sam and Alexa's return.

…

The new car was some sort of Jeep. It smelled like lemon verbena, and Alexa, per her vehement insistence, was stationed behind the wheel. Gavin had called dibs on shotgun, and Sam, mumbling about how nobody got to call dibs after age seven, had slunk into the back. Alexa had flicked on the radio in a clear indication that she'd absorbed too much crazy for one day and now needed some time to zone without talk, and, since everything but the country stations was scratchy in the mountains, they'd spent the next hour in a haze of guitar chords and crooning.

Sam didn't mind so much. He had a secret soft spot for country (a fact Dean could never know or he'd be all over Sam's ass about it for the rest of forever); he found it endearing in a hokey sort of way. Cradled in the gashes that glaciers had carved between the Sierra mountains, rocked by the long swerves of Alexa's steering, and listening to the radio talk to him about girls and boots and the backcountry, Sam couldn't help but feel comforted. If Sam ever used words like "cozy" in a serious context, he might've said cozy, except he definitely didn't. It'd been awhile since he'd felt so relaxed, though, and a small lump of guilt squelched its way into his stomach over that.

Still, he was just about drifting off when… "Hey. We still headed to Vegas or what? 'Cause we're about to hit the turnoff."

Alexa's voice rasped heavy from disuse, and it dragged Sam back into a seated position. He blinked out the window at the scrubby, brown slopes of the Eastern Sierra and said, "We in Nevada already?"

Gavin snorted. "We've been in Nevada for the past twenty minutes, dude," he drawled with a little smirk over the shoulder of the passenger's seat. "Gotta get your head in the game, O fearless leader."

Sam flicked out at the demon's forehead without turning away from the window. He didn't make contact because Gavin managed to flop back in time, but that was okay. The message had been delivered. "Vegas. Yeah," he said. "If we're seriously planning on hooking Alexa up with some fake plastic, it's a good place. I know a guy on the east side of the city who—" Sam bit himself off with a sharp dig of his right incisor into his lip. "Never mind." He paused to suck in a self-frustrated breath before changing tracks. "We'll be able to find someone there. Not like fraud is anything new in Vegas."

"Don't worry, dude," Gavin said, his smirk reflected back at Sam from the sun-heated glass of the windshield. "You don't need some old credit card forger; you've got us now."

Sam swallowed a scoff, realizing that he'd rather not offend Alexa while she was driving. He was still mostly convinced she was insane, and she might drive off the mountainside to prove a point.

"Although…" the demon wheedled on, tone faux-casual like the cool kids in school, "We really could use a few more people."

Sam leaned forward into the gap between the front seats, eyebrows set at a suspicious angle as he raked Gavin's profile. "Meaning?"

"My plan, remember?" Gavin beamed at him with an infuriating flick of his fingers along his hairline as if the coarse, black fur he had up there needed any brushing back. "You agreed to listen to my plan."

"You did," Alexa reminded him in her own imitation of boredom. She was better at it than Gavin, but Sam was trained to detect insincerity, and they were both more eager than they'd like to let on.

"I did," Sam agreed with a reluctant sigh. "Fine. Spit it out, old man."

Gavin's expression darkened in a brief scowl. "This is actually serious," he said, "So have some respect, dude." Then he wiggled a bit and let his mouth pop open for a second before saying, "Lucifer's gaining more followers by the day, and, like, he already has a lot. Once they've joined him, they're under peer supervision, so the chances of them backing out are low. Like, really fucking low. 'Cause nobody wants to get their limbs ripped off by tortured souls, you know?"

"And how do you know this?" Sam demanded with an arch to his brows. "Thought you'd fallen off the grid."

Gavin squirmed. "I may have gotten back in touch with an old friend to fill myself in on some details."

Sam's brain sharpened, and his glare was causing Gavin to edge away towards the window, misguidedly believing that Sam wouldn't notice if he didn't move his ass and just leaned his upper body that direction. "Who," Sam said frigidly.

"Old friend," Gavin repeated, voice higher this time. "Old friend. Very loyal. She's not going to tell anybody anything about you. She doesn't even know where we are. Just that I'm with you. I'm not an idiot; I know what I'm doing, and I needed her help." Gavin braced himself against the passenger door and turned to face Sam again with visible effort. Sam realized he'd subconsciously been squeezing the demon inside the body, and it had to be somewhat uncomfortable. Not that he cared, and he certainly wasn't going to stop, but it was a bit troubling to realize he could access his powers without conscious intent. He gave another little squeeze.

"Why?" he demanded.

"Aigh," Gavin winced. "Dude. Stop that."

"Why?" Sam repeated, ignoring Gavin's discomfort.

Gavin shot him a petulant look as he rubbed at his ribs with the arm that wasn't braced against the door. "Because I needed to know just how bad the situation was. The more demons Lucifer racks up to do his spying and torturing and soul collecting for him, the harder it's gonna be to take him out, and it's already pretty fucking impossible, you know? So my friend confirmed that, yeah, the situation sucks, but it's not totally hopeless yet. There are neutral demons still out there." He sucked in a dry breath and stared straight at Sam. "But they need a leader, and they need some assurance that they're gonna be protected, and you know who can do that?"

"No," Sam said immediately with a sharp shake of his head. He wouldn't. He could imagine the look on Dean's face if he ever found out Sam had even considered leading some sort of stunted demon army, and it put his Ruby expression to shame. Consorting with demons was not okay. Dean and Ruby and mostly Dean had drilled that into him, and Dean always understood the moral lines that Sam couldn't see.

"Fuck, dude," Gavin hissed as Sam released his invisible grip on the demon, "why not? I happen to like the world, you know? So do other demons. Lucifer's gonna destroy it. Kill all the people. Kill all the demons, which includes me. Yes, me. I happen to like me. I think you'll find I've got a lot of company. We've got a common goal here: save the world. Doesn't that sound good? Saving the world? Yeah? I think so too, so pick up the fucking mantel, and lead the goddamn army!" Gavin flushed a little at the end of his speech like he hadn't meant to get so loud, but he didn't break eye contact.

Sam did. "No," he said again, voice quieter. He wouldn't, wouldn't, wouldn't, even if he didn't understand why he shouldn't. Dean would hate it, he reminded himself. Dean knows best. And then he winced because he was twenty-fucking-six and he was still caving to his older brother's wishes without a logical explanation. Sam had gone to college, a good college; he understood rational thought, and he knew he should base his decisions upon good, strong logical foundations, but he'd blindly followed Dean for years. And yeah, Dean had been right about Ruby, but that was the only time Sam had ever really strayed. One mistake didn't mean Sam lacked any and all good judgement; he just had to be more careful in the future. So… was he letting Dean's opinion guide him because Dean really did know best? Really did have a firmer grasp on wrong and right? Or was Sam just trying to avoid the guilt of disobeying big brother again? What was right? What on earth was the right thing to do in a situation like this? And, fuck, why had no one taught him _that_ in college?

"Dude," Gavin began again, prepped for another round of arguing with his voice taut in frustrated fervor. But Sam cut him off. One tight squeeze, leaving Gavin choking on the next word as his eyes flickered to black and back.

"No," Sam repeated. He'd cave if he listened to any more of the demon's pep talks because it all made sense to him, what Gavin was saying, and he couldn't cave yet. He needed time to think it through on his own, time to wrestle some sort of guideline out of the long-fucked passages of his mind, and that would only happen if he was left with silence. So he gave Gavin one more pointed squeeze and leaned back into the tangy-scented seat, ignoring whatever Gavin and Alexa were murmuring to each other as he drifted over the pages of his moral code, so coated in red amendments that it looked like he'd dipped it in blood. Maybe he had.

That's how he fell asleep.

He surfaced out of the murky goop of his subconscious to find himself walking along a pristine sidewalk. The bruise-like hues of late evening coiled around white-washed mailboxes and clean-slatted houses. Fuzzy shadows hung low over the lawns, and the trees all seemed to be watching. Sam realized he was dressed in high quality jogging gear, the type of sleek polyester stuff he'd never owned, and there was a man ambling along a few paces in front of him who he was pretty sure he'd never met before. Tall guy. Kinda blond-ish. The beginnings of a beer belly were working at his gut.

"This is it, Sam," the man said, stopping before one of the hundred identical walkways that led up to the hundred sibling houses. He took a deep breath through his nose as if relishing the moment, but all Sam could smell was gas, cooling asphalt, and the shadows on the grass.

He squinted at their surroundings to locate the "it" this guy was on about, but he came up blank. Vaguely uncomfortable with the whole situation, and trying to sound polite, he asked, "Sorry, but… what am I looking for?" Really, Sam was a bit more concerned with the man's identity, but he figured it'd be rude to admit he'd forgotten. Since the man knew _Sam's_ name, he had to assume they'd been introduced already.

"That house," the not-stranger stranger explained with an amused slant to his lips. He tipped his forehead up the paved path to the southern-style country home dozing amidst the hydrangeas.

Sam gave it a deeper sweep, but it still seemed ordinary enough. No black-eyed sentries. No creepy children. No flickering lights.

"What about it?" he pressed.

Rather than answer, the blond man turned towards him and sighed, "Sam, I want you to know that I _do_ regret this, but I didn't have much of a choice after my…" He jogged his head back and forth, contemplating word choice, "…misguided younger brother hid you from my sight. You see, we have to meet, and I'm getting a bit impatient."

Sam took a step back. Suddenly being rude didn't seem such a crime. "Who are you?"

This time when the guy smiled it had the vaguely condescending air of a school teacher. "Just a son with the guts to question his father."

And, despite more than one, more than two — perhaps more than a thousand — lapses of judgment in his day, Sam hadn't been admitted to Stanford for nothing, so, when his eyes went cold and his muscles tightened and he said, "Lucifer," his voice came out with the sure blow of a blunt instrument. He knew.

The blond's mouth stretched in a slow spread of lip, no teeth, and he blinked. "I answer to that, too."

Sam's hand automatically slipped to his waistband in search of his gun, knife, anything, and it took a second for his brain to catch up to the times. He was wearing a jogging suit after all: no weapons. And even if he _had_ had his gun, this was the fucking devil. If he could be shot, somebody would've done it by now.

"Sam," Lucifer said with a placating palm upheld, "I'm not going to hurt you; this is a dream. I just want to explain the situation."

Sam fisted his hands uselessly at his sides. "What situation?" he growled.

"This one." He tipped his head towards the house again, which was still sitting primped and primed with innocuous surety upon its lawn. "You see, in a few hours, your brother, your crippled friend, and a young woman will be joining the elderly couple already present in that sweet piece of the American Heartland, along with one of my horsemen." Seeing Sam's murderous expression, he continued, "Don't worry. None of them will be injured…" He swayed a long finger through the air, letting his eyes roam easily before settling both upon Sam with a coy tip of his head, "As long as you show up by noon tomorrow."

Sam knew that, in all likelihood, it was a bluff, but he couldn't risk the possibility that it wasn't.

"Where?" he spat.

"Jackson, Tennessee. 46 Magnolia Way," Lucifer smiled. "I look forward to meeting you."

He placed a hand on Sam's shoulder with the comforting pat of a father, and then, in a silent breeze, he vanished. Sam jolted awake immediately.

"Change of plans," he snapped at a startled Alexa and Gavin, who had been watching the road in peaceable silence just a moment before, "We're going to Tennessee."


End file.
